Yesterday, we teased you with some tidbits from our interview with Caged Element, the small indie studio behind GRIP. The Rollcage-inspired combat racer made with Unreal Engine 4 is seeking development funds on Kickstarter and we took the opportunity to chat with Producer/Designer David Perryman to bring you fresh and exclusive information on GRIP. Enjoy!

　　Why do you think developers aren't that interested in this kind of games anymore?I think that combat racers are a niche genre these days. The interest is certainly big enough for a small indie developer to make but there’s not enough for the bigger Publishers… and therefore developers. Especially at the quality level we’re aiming for here. We feel we can do it because we have help from UE4 and Rob and I have done this before, we’ve both spent literally years understanding how this sort of game works. We don’t need to re-write the rulebook here, it’s not as much of a daunting task as it might be for a developer coming at it fresh.

　　How important will combat be as opposed to driving in GRIP? What are the odds that someone just focused on driving may win the race?If you just focused on racing and didn’t take any of the speed boosts or turbos? You’d be winning the race around 20% of the time, assuming you’re ok at it. If you’re excellent at it, you might push those odds up to 60%. Grip will reward skill: the more you play the better you get. However, what’s the point of that - you have an arsenal of juicy weapons at your disposal and this is not Gran Turismo. And the truly memorable moments will come when you're utilising your weapons to best effect. Like in the ‘Dance of Destruction’ cinematic trailer we’ve just released: timing it just right and taking out a building, boosting through a rain of debris, leaving your competitors to deal with the rubble… it’s moments like that that are remembered forever.

　　How many tracks you anticipate to be in the final version of the game?We’ve budgeted for 12 tracks over 4 Planets. If we reach one of the Backer Choice stretch goals then the community will have the chance to vote whether they want an extra planet. This will come with 3 new tracks.

　　How many cars will be in a track concurrently? Will the number be the same in single and multiplayer modes?We’re aiming for 10 cars per race. That would be the same for single player or multiplayer. Obviously split screen will be limited to 4 player cars and 6 AI cars. We are considering whether to implement split screen and online play at the same time, so that two people in the same room can play their friends over the internet at the same time.

　　GRIP will release on PC and PlayStation 4 first, with other platforms possibly following later. Why did you choose PlayStation 4 instead of Xbox One for now? Also, do you plan to enable crossplay between PC and PS4?We can only budget for one console for initial release and we felt that Playstation was the best fit since Rollcage’s heritage is firmly in the Playstation camp. However, we have every intention of releasing for Xbox One and other platforms a few months after launch.

　　We would love to be able to offer crossplay between all formats. However, there are a number of technical hurdles needed to overcome before we can say for certain.

　　Are you aiming for 60FPS on console? Some racing fans believe that it's fundamental to the experience, what about you?We’re aiming to deliver a fast paced, adrenaline fueled combat racer… anything less that 60fps would be daft. Yes, that is absolutely our goal.

　　Unreal Engine 4 introduced experimental DX12 support with its 3.9 release. Are you planning to exploit that performance boost by using DX12 in GRIP?We’ll be exploiting anything and everything to make this the fastest, most beautiful looking combat racer ever made.

　　What happens if the Kickstarter campaign does not reach its minimum goal? How will that affect your plans for the game?It’ll be a real shame if we don’t reach minimum goal. But we have every hope that we'll build momentum into the final week. I guess we’ll just have to see. The progress has been unusual so far, so it’s hard to gauge these things. But we’re doing all we can, and working with some great people to help get it the exposure it deserves. The community is right behind us and helping spread the word as much as they can and it all helps. If we don’t reach our minimum, then we’ll have given it a good go through this route, but we’ll have some hard decisions to make. All I can say is that I really hope our fans come with us on the journey, whatever other avenues we may try.

　　Thank you for your time, and good luck with the campaign.