Velvet Assassin places you in the shoes of Violette Summer, a British spy working behind German lines in Second World War. It is in many ways a recognizable "stealth action" game, where you'll find that you have to stick to the shadows and avoid direct confrontations with enemies in order to progress. The question is, will this game differentiate itself from the pack of similar titles? It is fairly unique in that your protagonist is based on real-life spy Violette Szabbo, who met a grim end in a concentration camp at the tender age of 23. This and other subjects are touched on in an interview with Inga Mittendorf, associate producer for Replay Studios.
Jason Rothauser: It seems that stealth games have a fine line to walk when it comes to the main character. Your character can’t be too powerful compared to the enemies, or else the option to simply chuck the stealth and kill everyone opens up, potentially ruining the stealth experience by removing meaningful incentives. On the flip side, implement countermeasures that are too heavy-handed – e.g. instant deaths/game-overs upon discovery – and the game will quickly become no fun. How do you make your character feel powerful and fun to play as, while forcing the player to use stealth? How do you avoid frustration?
Inga Mittendorf: I thank you so much for your perfect analysis – this is exactly the definition of how we ourselves understand the genre of stealth-action. It is indeed a very fine line if you have the wish to come up with a good stealth game which does stick to the genre without many compromises but does not get boring for the player.
We tried to make some general decisions on the game to make sure that it is interesting but does not have too many action elements in that. One important thing to make sure you get some security is the aspect of shadows. Shadows play a big role in the game because as long as you stick to the shadows a violet rim of light around your body indicates you that your enemies cannot see you on distance. This helps you sneaking through the levels. A second element that will help the gamer survive if their tactics of sneaking didn’t work is the Morphine Mode.
Once you have been spotted and there remains no time for you to get out your gun or knife you can use a morphine injection which slows down time for your enemies and gives you the chance to compensate for your mistake by taking out the guy who surprised you before he can set off an alarm. But you won’t have too many chances to use morphine because otherwise it will make it too easy. On the other hand if you had none of those morphine injections the game would be too unforgiving. The same goes for other weapons and ammunition: you will find something like that but it is always rare so that it can be only used in very few situations and cases of emergency.
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