Welcome
Offleash games is an independent game development studio devoted to the creation of single player PC games.
Currently Offleash is the one man show of Matthias Meyer, a seasoned developer who had participated in the development of titles like Neocron, The Guild 2, Mata Hari and Black Mirror 2 and now preferes to endure his own blunderings. Therefore it is just me and I here.
Design Philosophy
From my experience, the most reliable way to create something that others might find interesting, is to do something that is interesting to yourself.
With a concept I usually don't start with existing games, but with themes from movies, books or history text where I think: gee, I would like to have a game about this. This entails that it hasn't be done already. Designing starts with the questions: What do I want to see? What do I like to be doing? What do I want to experience? Then I begin searching for mechanics that convery these things. Usually I end up with something that is awfully complex under the hood, but looks simple and intuitive from the outside. I guess, that is because most of the fun and simple things have already been done, and I am just not a big fan of going for the obscure.
So exploring the rough and unexplored boundaries is what I am setting out to do. In bigger productions, actually with any team-size >= 2, there are clear limits on how much preprodution and prototyping can be afforded until you start moving toward something shipable. Maintaining this freedom as long as possible and leveraging the benefits of it, is what Offleash is about.
GRAND SPACE OPERA
This is Offleash's first title, featuring encounters between huge space battleships and including all the things that make up a good space opera: planetary invasions, exploring forgotten star systems, boarding space stations and a decent share of politics and drama. While there are a lot of games in the space genre, and especially very good ones covering small fighter combat, there is still no game that fits my idea of battleship combat.
What else is there to say? - all mechanics from trade to large scale warfare will be deeply integrated in order to provide a living, dynamic game world. Despite all complexity, GSO is designed to be pick-up-and-play. Accessibility is favored over depth. Playtime will approx. be between 4 and 8 hours. No grind, but high replayability.
GSO is a sandbox, not only for the player, but also from the perspective of the developer: something to deploy game mechanics in and experiment with. Therefore, there are a lot of details about this game, that even I don't know about yet. However, would I tell you I had a complete design and promise you that it will be totally rad, that would be something you should really be sceptical of.
More information about the game can be found at the GRAND SPACE OPERA home page.