"Make use of that second body and let that change the game" - Spectre Divide Game Designer talks about what to expect from the new shooter [Exclusive]

Spectre Divide is an upcoming FPS title by developer Mountaintop Studios, that has the backing and investment of some big names in the gaming industry. With a rather unique take on the tactical shooter genre, Spectre Divide has the potential to be the next big thing in the competitive gaming scene. Simply put, the game throws you on a map with some familiar elements but with fresh mechanics and strategies.

Last week, I had a chance to talk with Brian Inkrot, a Game Designer for Spectre Divide at Mountaintop Studios, who provided considerable insight into the game's ideas and the team's vision. Let's look at some of the details and background that Brian shared about their new FPS title.

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Spectre Divide is a game for anyone who has enjoyed Valorant or Counter-Strike, according to the Game Designer

Spectre Divide is a new upcoming FPS title from Mountaintop Studios (Image via Mountaintop Studios)

Q. The map Mill feels very similar to Cache from CS2, with the plant sites and a lot of the positioning. How much of this game is inspired by Counter-Strike or other FPS games and how does the Spectre mechanic fit here?

Brian: It's strongly inspired by Cache, Mill, in particular. I've spent a ton of time in Counter-Strike and this is actually the first map that we ever had in development. We had a version of this map that's older than duality (double body or Spectre), so we've been working on it for well over three years.

But we also kind of found that with duality, this map is an excellent starting spot because it's simple and straightforward. It's like, "Hey I have a body on A site and a body on B site, I can ping-pong to and fro." Or like "Hey I've got both my bodies covering different lanes in mid," for example.

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Q. How many maps are there in the game right now?

Brian: So there are three other maps that you can play right now. The plan is to do an hour today on each of the maps. There is a fourth map that we aren't going to show since we haven't announced it yet. But yeah, the other maps will have more complicated stuff.

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Q. The maps have a considerable amount of verticality to them. It appears that using Spectres is currently the only way to traverse the vertical parts or to take positions up there. Do you have plans for player-boosts, or is using Spectres going to be the only way to control the verticality?

Brian: Yes, right now we're only using Spectres for the verticality, although there has been a lot of discussion about this. I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the future, we have a kit that will be able to solve that on a solo level. But it wouldn't be a generic system for the whole team.

We really want to be able to reward you whether you've set up an area by putting your bodies up there or still got your body that opens up more tactical options. Something to let you make use of that second body and change the game.

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Q. I see we cannot drop guns in Spectre Divide. Is there a mechanic that allows us to drop guns or do you have any future plans for it?

Brian: We have our own little alternative to it, which is, that you can request a weapon pair. But your teammates can only buy one of the two weapons that you requested. So that allows you to properly manage your economy in the game. It's like, "Oh I don't have the money for a full buy but someone can buy me one of the weapons."

If you survive a round and have a weapon that you do not want to use in the next round, it goes to a shared inventory, which is the same as dropping that weapon down for someone else to pick up. It's just that we didn't put it on the ground for others to pick up.

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Q. What was the inspiration behind adding this anime aesthetic? It's not too unrealistic, but it also has a certain level of funk to it that stands out.

Brian: We just had a cool idea and were jamming on it back when the company was like five people, and we decided "Yeah, this works," and just stuck with it. We didn't have a particular reason, it was just an artistic vision that we sort of went ahead with.

We knew that we were looking for slightly futuristic, but not post-apocalyptic, and bringing in all those dark shades. We were looking to bring more color to it for sure, but also not be fully color-saturated.

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Q. Who is your target audience for Spectre Divide? Is it the Esports enthusiasts or more focused on the casuals?

Brian: We're targeting anyone who has enjoyed Valorant or Counter-Strike. The ADS bit here is going to be a bit of a transition for these players and we're hoping it will bring in people who have played other types of shooters. The mobility and accuracy of ADS compared to Valorant's model are going to be a big difference. But yeah, the idea is we want to start with the very hardcore audience.

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Q. The "sponsor" mechanic is very unique in these kinds of games, and every one of these has a significant effect on how your character's playstyle is going to be. How did you come up with that, and in the future, would there be a way where we can customize our own sponsors? Like, take one item from each of them and come up with a unique loadout suited to our playstyle?

Brian: That is fascinating. I will tell the kit team about it right now. Definitely nothing planned like that but there might be. We want to let you keep your player and customize it so that you get to be "you" and take your avatar everywhere.

We didn't want something like "Oh, if I want Sage's ability in Valorant, I will only have to take Sage" or something like that. Or, like only one person gets to play Tracer in a team in Overwatch. We didn't want any of that, so that's kind of where the sponsor idea came from.

We can have player customization here and also have utility loadouts the way you would normally expect. We have more of these planned and they will be added as time goes on for sure. Some of these kits are going to be really familiar like Pinnacle for example is pretty close to Soldier 76 in Overwatch. That can be a starting point and then you learn the rest of the game by playing.

But then again, kits like the Umbra only really work well with duality (Spectres) because one of your bodies is just sitting there scanning a large area of the map and anyone that they detect, your active body can flash or reveal them instantly. That then brings the question of "Where do I put my second body so that I can control this area of the map while I'm working with this other body to deal damage too?"

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Q. The highlight of the game is the Spectre mechanic. How did you achieve a proper balance and incorporate it into this game?

Brian: We've done a lot of tuning on that because we had to focus a lot on how quickly the Spectre moves when you throw the puck and a lot of things. I think you will find with time that if you are a little bit deliberate or intentional, it will start snapping and it will become really hard to be reactive with the Spectres. And that was the sweet spot that as designers we were aiming for.

So it's like if somebody has a clever move planned, you might be able to have that bit of advantage if you play it out correctly. We see this really cool learning curve where everyone starts off with using them as a second life, and then you're starting to use them more strategically, like placing them on the opposite site so that you can hear sounds on both of them. And then you're flipping back and forth between two of them to see what's going on or to get into the action faster.

And then it starts to kind of unfold into "Yeah I want my body in this specific location because they (opponents) are not gonna check this corner" or "Oh I can hear across this wall if I place my Spectre here" and then it just goes crazy from there.

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Q. What about game modes? It's obviously a 3v3 game with the Spectre twist, but do you have plans for a 5v5 mode or anything of that sort?

Brian: 3v3 was actually difficult to tune because it's greatly different from 5v5. Like, it's a lot harder to get two people to rush down an awper (sniper) in 3v3. That being said, 3v3 is definitely our main focus but game modes are something that we are talking about especially since you just don't want to boot up the game and immediately run into the ranked modes for example.

Something like a warmup is one thing that we're looking at. We just wanted to make sure that the core base experience is something that you could easily play for thousands of hours without being bored. And once we kind of have that, it will be exciting to see where the players will take it.

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Q. What about the game's anti-cheat? Are you guys going for some in-house anti-cheat or keep using BattlEye?

Brian: Oh so it's not only BattlEye. We're going with an approach that has a whole lot of different layers. So, BattlEye is for example just one layer and then we have a couple of different in-house systems that are also doing that. We've seen a bunch of games recently that unfortunately have terrible player experiences because of the cheating and hacks.

So, we're taking a very measured approach there. We have got an excellent security dev in particular. It's no Riot kernel-level or anything like that, we're afraid of saying too much about it just because people will be curious.

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Q. We're playing on EU servers right now, are we getting Asian servers anytime soon?

Brian: For launch, a 100%. So we have this funny issue where everybody is trying to playtest as much of the game as they can right now, which is a great problem to have. But for that reason and to make this a press-only event, we have only opened up the EU servers this morning. So unfortunately, this is the worst this game is ever going to feel for you guys with the high pings.

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Q. What are the system requirements that we're looking at for Spectre Divide?

Brian: Windows 10 or above, right now we're looking at i5 or above and Ryzen 5 or above. 8 GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia 1080, or RX 6700. Ideally obviously SSD. And that's about it. We're aiming a little higher because we want to make sure that the performance is there.

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Q. When can we expect a final release date for Spectre Divide?

Brian: We will disclose the final release date on August 1. It will definitely be this year (2024). It might even be closer than you think.

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Q. Are you going to launch Spectre Divide on consoles as well? Are there any future plans?

Brian: No. It's launching just for PC. But we do have future plans for consoles.

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Q. Is the game going to be free to play?

Brian: Yes, Spectre Divide will be completely free to play.

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