Summary
- The real-life inspiration behind Russian Subway Dogs.
- The basics of being a stray.
- Simulation is our insider tip.
Russian… Subway… What?
Our game Russian Metro Dogs out today on Xbox One! It’s a single-screen arcade game inspired by the real stray dogs of the Moscow Metro. I’ll share how we ended up developing a game with such an unusual theme and the novel approach we took to bring depth, humor and variety to the classic score-chasing gameplay.
The seed of the idea came about a decade ago when I read an article online about a handful of strays who had learned to navigate Moscow’s labyrinthine subway system. If you’re unfamiliar with these smart dogs, they actually commute to downtown Moscow every day, chasing passing pedestrians for food, and then return home to the quiet suburbs every night to sleep. One of these dogs was so popular they even erected a memorial statue in his honor!
While researching these strays, I also discovered the incredible architecture of the city’s subway stations. These are not just simple, tiled hallways in muted colors. Styles range from a church-like train station with stained-glass windows to a super-modern, Mondrian-inspired design of intersecting lines and rectangles.
The dogs were cute and smart, and the Soviet-era subway stations were grand and palatial (do seriously look around). I knew we had to make this game!
Eat ’em up gameplay
So, adorable animals? Check over! Nice backgrounds? Check over! But how does it play?
As the eponymous Subway Dog, you run back and forth on every subway platform trying to feed yourself. A stamina bar serves as a combined hunger and health gauge, and will constantly deplete as you scavenge for food to refill it. Trains stop at the station, regularly unloading commuters who eat and drink a variety of tasty snacks and drinks that you can steal. A quick bark behind them is enough for them to throw their food up for you to snatch from the air.
Of course, there’s competition, as these trains also bring with them rival strays and a ridiculous array of tube wildlife. Everything from subway pigeons to subway bears are after your food, losing points and potential stamina as they snag snacks.
Eliminate this competition with the help of a highly volatile vodka. Carried by random passengers, these alcohol bottles create a fiery explosion when they hit the ground. If your mighty bark is just right, you can bounce the bottles around in the air. This is a crucial skill as Vodka Blasts cooks wildlife and roasts food, creating more filling and higher rated meals!
By juggling multipliers and air catching combos, experienced players can turn a small meal worth a few dozen points into a fancy feast worth thousands. There is high risk/reward because if a competing dog snags a valuable meal, those points will be deducted from your score, so negative points will be offset. Ouch!
Systemic simulation is our insider tip!
This basic eat ’em up gameplay forms the basis for Russian Metro Dogs‘ Truly unique addition to the arcade genre: systemic simulation. This is also known by other fancy names like “multiplicative design”, “chemistry engines” or just “emergent gameplay”, but basically all parts of the game interact with every other part in a way that is roughly that’s what real world feels like, or at least a fun cartoon logic version of the real world.
In Russian Metro Dogs This means that any Fire source will cook food and melt snow. Snow cools cooked food or can freeze a flapping fish, creating a block of ice that can scurry across the stage. The same power-up that lets you bark fire can be eaten by a rival dog, causing it to bark fire instead, and of course that bark of fire cooks food too! You can also feed bears before cooking them to fatten them up to produce higher quality meat, or feed them chocolate (toxic to dogs) which creates poisonous meat. Almost everything in the game has multiple uses and interactions!
The result is that there are tons of secret tricks to discover and exploit. Each mix of food, humans and wildlife on the platform holds its own strategic choices and interesting split-second decisions.
We brought guests!
Russian Metro Dogs includes two different game modes:
Endless is a modern take on the classic score chasing experience. Fight for the top spot in the online leaderboard while surviving as long as you can. It uses some modern procedural tricks and automatic balancing to keep each session fresh, unique and challenging.
In the campaign, you’ll travel from station to station with handcrafted challenges and over 100 unique sub-missions from your feline friend, The Proletaricat, such as: B. completing a level while going vegetarian or cooking a “Bear BQ”.
Over the course of the campaign, you’ll unlock over a dozen playable creatures, including several from your favorite indie games like Rad Shiba and Nacho VA-11 Hall-Ahorror out Nuclear ThroneHey goat from Guacamelee! and more.
Whether you’re a dog lover, a cat lover, or whatever-Nidhogg-is lover, I hope you grab a tube ticket and ride with us!
Russian Metro Dogs
Spooky Squid Games Inc.
$14.99
$13.49
A fast-paced arcade game inspired by the real-life stray dogs of the Moscow metro. Take orders from the proletariat as you steal food, juggle vodka, cook bears, and more! Offers both a long campaign and an arcade mode to take and play. A new game from Spooky Squid Games, creators of the cult platformer classic Slash ’em up They Bleed Pixels.