Serbian developer Pet Project Games is coming out today on Steam Early Access with RIPOUT, currently available for $22.49 thanks to a 10% discount that runs through the end of this month.
RIPOUT, Pet Project’s debut game, is a cooperative first-person shooter game set in a science fiction universe. Players need to band together to fend off mutated aliens in procedurally generated environments. According to the developer, the full game will launch in early 2024 after five updates for the early access version have been released, adding new mission types, enemies, weapons, armors, destructible obstacles, and expanding the spaceship hub.
We interviewed Pet Project Games via email to discuss RIPOUT’s various features.
What were your influences in terms of sci-fi horror lore? What about game design influences?
We were influenced heavily by 80’s Body Horror movies: The Thing, The Fly, and Videodrome to name a few. There is also the inescapable Alien influence when you are in a space horror genre. From the game side, it is a broad spectrum. Games like Dead Space, the first Half-Life, and DOOM 3 come to mind, along with the co-op genre greats like Left 4 Dead, Hunt Showdown, etc.
When did development begin on RIPOUT? Did you have to change anything major from the original pitch?
We started in 2020, just before COVID broke out. The major pitch with players venturing into
derelict spaceships using the pet gun was developed very early on. That didn’t change since
it was decided. We had a lot of changes to how we approached these ideas.
I know there have been several beta tests over the past year. Did you incorporate any specific feedback from the community?
Yes, we implemented a lot of community feedback, ranging from monster count to difficulty, player movement, UX, and lighting.
Procedural level generation is being used more and more in games, albeit with somewhat mixed results. What did you do to make sure the output maps would be interesting to explore?
This is a difficult and ongoing task. We have a flexible system at early access and a lot of “Area” Varieties that we combine to always mix things up, but we are working on more features to give a strong differentiation between missions and ambients.
What we feel works at this time is that things like monsters, loot spawns, and upgrade stations
always provide unpredictable situations that make each run feel different. What we would like to improve is the mission variety that challenges players in different ways. More unique settings are also in the pipeline.
How much content can players expect for the early access launch of RIPOUT?
We already started working on additional content that includes new enemies, weapons, armour, missions, environments, and room for feedback.
The current build appears to suffer from shader stuttering. Do you plan to add shader pre-compilation ahead of the launch to alleviate the issue?
We will be looking into it, but we can’t say that this issue will be solved ahead of launch.
RIPOUT runs on Unreal Engine 4. Are you going to upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 like other games are doing?
Not in the near future. Right now, it would take away focus from working on the gameplay and shift it to doing a lot of technical rework.
I’ve seen that there is a ray tracing toggle in the game’s settings. Which ray tracing effects did you implement so far? Do you plan to add more?
We are working with NVIDIA to implement all the latest ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS support in the game.
How much performance improvement do you see on average with DLSS Frame Generation enabled?
While there is a boost of performance improvement at the moment with DLSS Frame Generation, we are still working with Nvidia on improving stability.
Do you plan to add DLSS 3.5 support to improve the quality of ray tracing?
Not at the moment. We are working with the current Nvidia distribution Streamline plugin for Unreal Engine 4.
Are you going to implement support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 and/or Intel Xe Super Sampling, too?
We are thinking about it, and it might happen during the Early Access of the game development.
I noticed that the controller support in RIPOUT isn’t finished (for example, rumble functionality is completely missing). Will you improve it during the early access?
Yes, We will be following up on improving all quality-of-life aspects, along with controller support.
Do you have an ETA on the console launch dates?
We will do it as soon as 1.0 hits, and we are aiming for Q1 2024.
Thank you for your time.
