“WE FOCUS ON THE TECHNICAL BRILLIANCE OF ELITE BUT


RARELY ON THE CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC SIDE OF IT”


After celebrating Doctor Who last issue, how about a game that pays tribute to the full spectrum of bleak and cheerful 20th Century British sci-fi? Australian solo developer Luke Miller tells us all about his Liberation


When people talk of British sci-fi of the 1980s, video games are rarely part of the conversation, but you obviously believe there’s much that ties them together? My subconscious went there before I had a clear explanation for what was calling me to make this game [Liberation]. I knew I wanted to make “my version of Elite”. I knew it had to have an Amiga retro computer flavour. I had a strong drive to push it towards Blake’s 7 and something was inexplicably telling me to make it as metal as possible even though I’m more of a synth-pop person. So for the first half of developing


an Elite-style space game I was like “Why? Why? Why am I thinking Beano? Why am I thinking Robots of Death? Why am I thinking Judge


44 | MCV/DEVELOP December/January 2023


Dredd and Christopher H Bidmead?” I was fighting it until I had a moment of clarity


- that entire body of work (books, movies, TV, games, comics, audio and even the hardware) are all in the same thematic universe. Think about it ... it was mostly created by people who grew up at the same time in the same part of the world


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68