Imagine you’re Hadley Orah, the pilot of a mining craft from New Jozi, held together with nothing more than spit and duct tape. One day, after an incident with some seriously dodgy tech, you find yourself stuck in a galaxy so far away it makes trying to get to your cousin’s wedding in the Northern Cape look like a quick trip to the shops.
Now, you’re on a mission to portal-jump your way back home while also having to take down the DraadMek and save the universe, a task that’s very much like looking for biltong in a vegan shop – impossible, but you’ve got to try.
Arielle: If you had to describe your game to somebody who knows nothing about it, like your grandma, what would you tell her?
Romy: I would tell her: You’re lost in space, and you have to find your way home while millions of little aliens are trying to kill you.
That’s the premise of Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga in a nutshell. It’s a truly South African twin-stick shooter with no shortage of South African-isms, heart or soul, and with action hotter than a Durban beach on a summer day. But that’s not all that Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga brings to the table. It also has a rogue-like gameplay loop that will allow Hadley to learn a little bit more about the universe and his place in it each time he tries, and fails, to get home.
And here’s the kicker: unlike the classic twin-stick shooters we all grew up with, Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga has a story-rich campaign that actually makes you care about what’s happening and from the moment I first stumbled across the game, I was excited.
Sure, I’m no good at shooting, avoiding getting shot or handling more than one stick at a time – and even then, it’s touch and go, but Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga lured me in with something that I am good at – looking at pretty art, reading a pretty story and listening to oh so pretty music.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for – last week, I had the chance to sit down with Romy Latter, co-founder of Unsigned Double Collective, a small but mighty team out of Cape Town, and the artistic genius behind Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga.
But before we dive into the juicy bits, let me introduce you to Unsigned Double Collective. This dynamic duo consists of South African couple Lasse Manson and Romy Latter—he’s the developer, and she’s the artist, and if you need any indication of how awesome they truly are, Hadley’s Run only took them 14 months to complete – from start to finish.
Aside from Lasse and Romy, the game also saw contributions from Matinino, who handled the music and sound design and Liam Brickhill, who took care of the writing.
So, if you can tear yourself away from the stunning art of Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga for just a moment, I’ll share that conversation between me and Romy with you. If you’re itching to check out Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga in the meantime, follow the link here to the game’s official Steam profile. And now, without further ado…
(Full disclosure: before the interview officially kicked off, we had a good few minutes of banter, swapping stories, and sharing a laugh. But since you weren’t there, you missed out. You’ll just have to imagine the kind of jokes that had us cracking up like we were old friends, drifting through space together.)
Arielle: … and with that, would you please introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about how you ended up here, creating video games?
Romy: Sure! I’m Romy and I actually started my career in the animation industry. It’s what I studied before beginning to work as a junior, doing whatever they told me to do because that’s what happens when you’re a junior.
After about a year, I started freelancing instead, which I did for about ten years. I did a lot of modelling and character design, but what I really wanted was to work in games.
However, there aren’t many game studios in South Africa, and there are a lot more opportunities to work in animation. So that’s why I stayed in animation for so long, I think.
But then I met my boyfriend, the developer of this game. We’ve been together for about 12 years, and he’s a programmer. Because I’m an artist, we always thought that those things would go nicely together, and we should make a game together. So that’s kind of how that happened.
Arielle: I love that. That’s amazing. I always love it when people come up with an idea, and they’re like, we should totally do this, and then they actually go and do it. It’s so inspiring.
Arielle: When it comes to Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga, what inspired the core concept for the game?
Romy: Well, my partner and I both played a lot of Geometry Wars when we were kids, Lasse especially. He has lots of memories of just playing Geometry Wars with his friends.
So that was a big inspiration. Then the other thing was that our goal was really just to finish a game. That sounds silly, but we’ve started games before where we didn’t finish, which happens a lot in Game Dev, because of scope creep and also… Game Dev is hard.
So we also picked the genre we did really carefully because we knew that we could do it, that it fitted within our skill sets, and that it didn’t require us to learn that many additional skills.
Arielle: How did you guys want the game to be different and stand out from other twin-stick shooters?
Romy: The main thing was that we really wanted to add an element of story and adventure. A lot of twin-stick shooters and even roguelikes don’t have that much narrative in them.
But we really like narrative games. The games that I play in my spare time, a lot of them are story-based and have adventure, exploration, and meeting people. That’s what I really like in games.
I also hope that the people who find the game think, “Oh, cool. It’s a twin-stick shooter with a story”, and aren’t disappointed when they open it up, and there’s loads of dialogue.
We also really wanted to include some element of South Africa in it, which was also important because you don’t get that often in games.
Arielle: Yeah, no kidding and a South African vibe is something that Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga is not short of. But talking about the game’s narrative, can you tell us a little bit about the story?
Romy: Sure. So you start off as Hadley, who’s the pilot of a little mining craft, not a great mining craft, more like a shitty little ship, and he’s from a South African space colony called New Jozi. And he’s just, like, going about his business.
Then Hadley gets a call from Nia, who wants him to transport a package that he doesn’t really know anything about. And then, things go a bit pear-shaped, and he ends up in the far reaches of space, all alone, with aliens after him who are trying to get the package.
And yeah, with Nia being his only point of contact as he tries to get back to New Jozi, they kind of start to form a friendship and a relationship while she’s guiding him back home. Oh, and obviously, along the way, you’re fighting all the baddies and killing all the aliens.
Arielle: You also mentioned enjoying narrative games in your spare time. Can you share some games you enjoy playing when you aren’t working?
Romy: So recently, I’ve been playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3. A lot.
Then Lasse and I also like playing Co-op games together, especially when we can play on a couch together.
I also recently played Cult of the Lamb for the first time, and I actually want to go back to it because I learned that you can co-op it now.
I mostly play games that I can play with friends, but not hardcore competitive online shooters. That’s not my vibe at all. I could maybe enjoy them, but I’m awful at them.
Arielle: And if you had to give any advice to other aspiring game developers, especially in South Africa, what would you say?
Romy: Get involved with the community. The game dev community has been so awesome to us. As soon as we told them that we were working on this project, they were awesome and helpful and gave us so much advice.
There’s a group called Maker’s Massive, which meets in Cape Town once a month and is super helpful.
My other advice would be to start small.
Arielle: I really love that advice. Now, when it comes to Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga, what’s next for the game?
Romy: That is all dependent on how well the game actually sells. We are fully self-funded and self-published, so we don’t have a ton of funding or time to really support it if it’s not selling.
That being said, if people find it and like it, we would love to support it more and however it works out, we’re going to fix any bugs that come up.
There are also some things we would like to add, but we just don’t have a big roadmap plan with loads of updates in mind unless it sells really well; then that might change.
Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga is available now on Steam for R199. The game features a cast of interesting characters with whom to meet and build relationships. It also boasts a unique, African-inspired, universe to explore while trying to survive waves of enemies and rack up points like you’re collecting Stokvel contributions.
There’s also an official soundtrack available on Steam, and honestly, the mix of EDM fused with eclectic African flavours is one of my favourite parts of the whole experience. It just pulls everything together.
Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga also comes with an Easy Mode for noobs like me, which offers a more forgiving experience, as well as an Arcade mode for those who just want to pick up the game and try and smash their high score without any of the narrative and story getting in the way of their alien killing.
But now I want to hear from you; what do you think about Hadley’s Run: A Starship Saga? Let me know in the comments.