Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Earlier today we talked to Positech’s Cliff “Cliffski” Harris about his new game, Gratuitous Space Battles. There was also some discussion of a Saddam Hussein sim, the pitfalls of outsourced indie art, and the problems of small-playerbase multiplayer.
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In space, no-one can hear you be gratuitous.

Space is gratuitous. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly gratuitous it is.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Gratuitous.

Ack, it’s no good. I just can’t decide which stereotypical sci-fi quote to tiresomely rip-off. Instead, just watch this video of Cliffski ‘Gets A Bit Feisty’ Harris’ new’un. BOOM.
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Positech have been busy capturing the essence of spacewar for their new strategy/management/simulation game, Gratuitous Space Battles, and we get a glimpse of it here: giant, glacial capital ships firing colossal beam lasers through swarms of tiny fighter craft. Yeah, that’s the stuff. Cliffski knows what to do. Now go! Witness those titular space battles below. (And I have to say, this one really interests me, and not simply because I’m an unmitigated spacewar nerd.)
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Just in case you’re casting about for something to play in the dark hours of our Northern Hemisphere winter (damn you, Southern Hemisphere dwellers!) Cliffski has put up a new demo for the rather realistic governmental simulation Democracy 2. It’s a genuinely excellent game with lots of icons, and we all love icons. But there’s more than icons: there’s brains too. And they’re not so visible. Anyway, Kieron discusses the game in a bit more detail here. The new demo is here, and there’s a patch out for those of you who already own the thing.

Behind the faux-futuristic moniker of Positech stands one man. Cliff “Cliffski” Harris has been quietly working up his own catalogue of indie-games since leaving Lionhead, shortly after they shipping the Movies. Having experienced both indie and mainstream development, produced a string of games – Democracy, Kudos, Rock Legend – that are clearly chasing after a grail seperate from the majority of developers and managing to earn a living from what may at first appear niche games, Cliff has a lot of things to say. And, as anyone who’s every followed him in a forum thread, he’s not a man for mincing his words. We talk about his origins, how he feels he’s grown up as a developer, how he actually manages to feed his cats and how he believes a game can be “anything”.
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