Police 1013 (in development)
Police 1013 is perhaps one of the most anticipated Police simulations in gaming history ever since it was announced several years ago. Wingman Games are Australian based but with developers around the globe are they are the ones putting the game together and so far they are going pretty nicely in their quest to release a very accurate Police game. Visitors to their Discord and Facebook pages know that Wingman Games are a passionate group particularly founder Matt Norman and this sometimes gets them in trouble like in last October and the other day in Discord.
But lets back to the game, their most recent Developer Diary back in November showed off the games environment and in the end you see the placeholder player running down the road. The game environment shown included sunshine and fog showing everyone that players will get to experience a range of weather patterns. Live streams after the Developer Diaries have also shown gamers progress of buildings, rivers, streams and other locations.
Other videos show progress in animation such as the video below showing Rifle animations as well as arresting animation
Their Facebook page and Discord channel also has an ample supply of screenshots of assets that are in the game including parts of the interior of a bank for example. Police 1013 has some problems at the moment but they are standard problems many productions face such as finding money, finding developers, perceived slowness of development and hype. Let's start with the money problem, Money pays the bills, developers need money to pay their bills to make a game that will pay their future bills. So to make this less of a problem they've got Project Blue Line and an online store, Project Blue Line is pretty much a mix of Steam Early Access and Kickstarter as you pre-purchase the game and the perks that go with it whilst you wait for it to come out. They got a long way to go to meet their money goals but they are making progress which is good. Another problem is the need for developers, there is a shortage of developers and you need developers to spread out over the various aspects of the game like coding, game environments, assets and you also got to rotate them through so nobody gets bored being in the one spot. Police 1013 also has a community artists section which provides the game with shop advertisements and other bits and pieces so that is helping development along. The development speed issue has been a topic floated by many over time but in reality once investors said skip Tech Demo for Alpha then it has only been a few months and so they are pretty much on track for a team their size, it is just the years taken up by building a tech demo and fundraising that makes it seem like a very long time. The last thing we consider a problem is hype, there is so much interest in this game and that in turn raises expectations and so Wingman Games has a lot of pressure to deliver on all the many features they've announced as coming and there is a lot of features and people want to even more features and so there is the fear the game could collapse from the pressure. Unfortunately for those hoping for Australian Police action, Police 1013 is set in the United States which is a little disappointing but on the bright side at least it won't be like Blue Heelers where they have lots of crime action in small rural area of Australia which is exaggerated and probably scares tourists off regional areas. There are times we have our doubts on this game, the hype makes us wonder if the game will be top heavy with items to satisfy demands yet be compromised somewhere else or will the game premise be too high a mountain to climb but the passion and sighted progress has given us confidence in eventual success. Stay tuned in the future for further reports on Police 1013.
