InMomentum InTransition To Unreal 3 Engine
Interesting news for InMomentum, the splendid esoteric free running platform... thing. They've just been approved by Epic to move over to the Unreal 3 engine. The game, currently in beta, was previously using the Unreal Development Kit. But now they say they're able to do a lot more, with a more flexible engine and greater polish. As project lead Norbert Varga explains to us, after praising UDK, "Ever since we started working with UE3, things started to work a lot better." But there's a lot more going on in the colourful geometric world, too.
Epic seem pleased too. Their European Territory Manager (I love publisher job titles) Mike Gamble gave a neat cough, put on his press release voice, and said,
"As part of our mission to provide developers with the best tools, we are keen to see Digital Arrow fully realize their unique vision for InMomentum. The studio has already come a long way by using our free UDK toolset, and is now positioned to achieve even more success with a commercial Unreal Engine 3 license."
Digital Arrow seem to have an enormous amount of ambition for the game. When we first played it, it was already a very exciting idea, well executed. But as the beta goes on, it keeps evolving. And we're hearing rumours that hidden in the game is something of a single-player narrative-driven campaign that they're not even discussing yet. There are further plans to let the game start getting influenced from the outside, but that's all pretty vague at the moment.
Varga promises us that the game will continue to evolve after release too, explaining that it will frequently be patched.
"What users can also expect is constant patches which will be heavily influenced by user support upon release. We've already added some edits to our game modes based on the beta feedback, and the game plays so much better. Most of the user feedback has already found its way into the game one way or another, and the rest will follow shortly as new patches arrive."
They're not kidding about that. Entire new game modes are being added at the beta users' suggestion, as we can exclusively reveal.
"All of our levels have been boosted up to these new visuals as well, and there are some additional levels in the making for a game mode that users suggested - a game mode inspired by Super Smash Bros: knock your enemy off - get points - stay alive the longest = win."
However, that mode is not yet in the beta.
And another thing - the soundtrack is beginning to be revealed.
To give you an idea of the difference UE3 will make to the game, here's a before-and-after image:
The game is due out in the first half of October, if all goes well. But if you want to get your hands on it right now, we've got 50 Steam beta keys to give away. The first 50 people who email compo@rockpapershotgun.com with the title "stick your key in me" will get one. If you don't use that title, you'll not get a key, and I'll mark you as spam. And kick you. They're all gone now, sorry.