I spotted Andy Moore of Radial Games hanging around the awesome Winnitron 1000 indie arcade cabinet on the floor of GDC 2011. It had been a while since I (by means of Dejobaan Games) spoke with Andy at the virtual water cooler, so I was eager to catch up.

Before GDC, he excitedly took part in an indie giving event where 60 devs came out on the weekend and refurbished three homeless shelters. Andy was equally excited about all of the projects he is working on. He’s developing a multiplayer SteamBirds (with pilots!) and is about to roll out dedicated forums for the SteamBirds community. Finally, gamers should keep their “eyes peeled” for his upcoming potato game.

DIYgamer: What are you working on?

Andy Moore: SteamBirds multiplayer is currently in development, and a beta will be open to the public in the summer. Our dedicated Steambirds forum is getting ready to open up. If I need 100 players to do a stress test on SteamBirds, the forum will be the first place to go for testers.

Will there be a cap to the amount of players?

I’m trying to make it cap-less. It’s basically limited by the rendering engine. I may put a cap on for performance reasons.

Will this be an add-on of the current SteamBirds?

This will be another game. If you have a save file from the first or second game with planes unlocked, that save will unlock special content in the new multiplayer game. We want to reward the old players. It costs $15.00 to unlock all the planes in Survival, so I ideally want to reward $15.00 of content in the multiplayer version.

What new content will players see?

There will be different missions such as bombing missions. We will develop the game over time. The first version will look similar to the current game. We will introduce pilots, I think. You’ll have a pilot in your plane, plane might be good at something else. So it’s a combination of two skills.

The plane can die. The planes have permadeath, but your pilot can parachute to safety. Pilots are what you level up; planes are consumable. There will be free planes available, as I always want the game to be accessible to everyone.

I’m hoping to have very little advertising this time around. Having people around in the game is a benefit because it provides opponents for everyone else. We need fodder!

Is there any way to deal damage to the players themselves?

No, but I really like the idea of permadeath. I love permadeath games, but I know it’s really dangerous territory. People don’t want to lose everything, so I like that we have half and half.

You can develop a roster of pilots. One of them might be shot down, and he’ll have to walk back home. It might take him a while to walk back, so you can’t use him again for a day or two. There’s a time penalty, but you get him back. You can then assign him a new plane or build him a new one out of a stockpile of scrap metal.

It sounds like you have a great amount of design objectives to experiment with.

Well, we’ve actually done all the experiments with the two online versions of the games, the Android version of the game (which is different) and the different iOS game. We took the best of all four versions and used that for the template of the multiplayer.

What platforms will it release on?

It will be out on all platforms. When we won the Indie Pub Game of the Year award, it came with an XBLA contract, so might as well… I want an Android person to be able to play against and iOS person. I want them to all tie in.

I’m thinking of a Words with Friends kind of play style, where you have seven things going on at once. When it’s your turn, you just hop in. It’s very early in development, but it won’t take long to make.

When can we expect to play it?

I’m thinking, by early May we’ll have our internal builds up. Then, once we get the stress tests going, it’ll be about a month or two. SteamBirds and SteamBirds Survival each took a month, so I’m not expecting this to be a six month project.

Are you planning on traveling cross country again on your van?

No, I spent four months doing that.

Did it teach you about anything or inspire you to make a game?

I went to aviation museums, so it’s been a little bit of inspiration. But not a whole lot because I’m a pilot. But I did get inspired to make a few other games.

I stopped at a potato farm on the east coast of Canada, and I went to two potato museums. I kind of went to them as a joke, but it was so interesting: how in-depth they were with slicing the potatoes, all the systems they have. I was like, “Hey, this is kind of like a Potato Tycoon.,” so I started drafting it up.

Where would you put the game?

I’m thinking something such as Big Fish. That’s the kind of market that goes well with those kind of things.

[Thanks for the interview, Andy! Watch his blog for more updates.]