Robert Bowling Talks Human Element and Ouya

Ex-Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling has spoken to Eurogamer about his next project, Human Element.

It will be the first project developed by his new studio Robotoki, and is slated for release on next-gen consoles sometime in 2015. But over the next few years, Bowling plans to release a series of episodic prequels exclusively on Ouya.

Human Element is a first-person game set in a zombie apocalypse. The Ouya prequels, however, will be set 35 years before the next-gen title and will tell the story of how the world came to an brain-eating end.

Bowling said the console's open platform "allows us the flexibility and the freedom creatively to use it as a testbed for all these rapidly prototyped mechanic and gameplay experiences that maybe are too costly and risky to dedicate a full priority list to on another platform."

The prequels will offer a range of different experiences and a variety of gameplay mechanics. "With each episode I really want to focus the scope around either a specific mechanic or an experience that we're trying to deliver," said Bowling.

"Say episode one could be focused on the fortification aspect of survival; finding your location, finding supplies, building fortifications to secure it, building alarm systems within it so you know when it's breached... nailing what makes that fun and exciting and thrilling in a survival scenario. And then once we do that in episode one, episode two could be completely different.

"Episode two could be focused on going out in this world, dealing with that human element much more. Dealing with other survivors, dealing with the moral choices you need to make when you come across scenarios, knowing that you could always fall back to that safe haven you built in the first episode."

Have you had enough of zombies? And what do you think of the decision to use Ouya as a platform to test new ideas? Let us know in the comments below.

Daniel is IGN's UK Games Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com