One of the first choices you make in a tactical shooter – especially in Rogue Point – is deciding which gun to bring on your raid. Are you having fun and experimenting? Or are you trying to fill a specific role within your team to maximize your effectiveness?

We wanted this choice to truly matter, so here is a quick overview of our weapon economy, Dead Drop system, and goals for weapon design.


With Rogue Point's economy, we referenced games like Counter-Strike, where you start with a small amount of money each game and must perform actions during a raid to earn more resources and improve your operator’s build.

We've also included ways for players to earn specific skills and buffs, but that's for a different dev diary…

In the beginning, players can spend a small amount of money to improve their chances of having a successful raid, OR they can save their money for the next round to purchase higher-tier items.

Our goal is to make it a challenge to acquire higher-tier weapons, and to make it impossible to buy every gun you might want to try in a single campaign. Players must work together and also decide whether to be a balanced team OR a balanced operator.

For example, you may choose a longer-range pistol right out of the gate. This will help you and your team engage targets at longer distances on the easier raids. You'll then have to decide if you want to spend money to make your loadout more balanced, such as by buying a shotgun, OR if you want to stick to your long-range role and buy a rifle as your next big purchase.

You can also take the opposite approach by buying an inexpensive shotgun at the start, then following up with a long-range pistol.

Making decisions that affect your whole run can be tough…and expensive. We designed the Dead Drop system to help players get into the action, and help change up the economy.


As mentioned above, buying and experimenting with all the guns should be difficult and expensive. The higher end weapons bring a ton of versatility and firepower to your team, so they demand a high price (both in universe and in our game design).

However, we also don’t want players to feel like they can’t try new things or to fall into the same comfortable patterns during every campaign.

To address this, we developed the Dead Drop system. This feature allows players to experiment with different weapons while introducing a risk/reward element to the loadout phase of the game.

Essentially, the system functions as a figurative slot machine for weapons. Players can spend a modest amount of in-game currency for a chance to obtain useful items for their next raid. This gamble could yield a high-end gun, heavy armor, grenades or perhaps even all of the above.

Players can also discover Dead Drops tucked away within the levels. Extracting these hidden packages grants them a free spin for their next loadout/store phase.

In short, we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want players to manage limited resources by carefully planning and selecting gear to fulfill specific roles. At the same time, we want to surprise them with fresh gear from Dead Drops, encouraging them to adapt to new roles based on what they’ve just acquired.



You’ve seen this gun before. It is a certified classic, but what makes it special? What aspects of its design can be used for gameplay? The Trooper - 9mm is well known for its handling, and its 9mm ammo has basically peaked in terms of stopping power. So, what drawbacks can we add based on our gameplay potential and real-world attributes?

Well, it’s slightly older design means it does not have a bolt release like many newer SMGs. This makes reloading take longer, which is a considerable drawback in the heat of battle.

It also lacks a standardized rail system seen on modern firearms. Despite its remarkable foundation, this limitation imposes a ceiling on how far the weapon can be customized or enhanced.

Even with these structural limitations, it is still an amazing house to live in (OK, that is as far as I will use that metaphor).


To wrap up, how can we incorporate the real-world design of guns into our game? How can we spice up the system to ensure players aren’t always choosing the “meta” guns or the guns they are most comfortable with? How can we make sure guns and loadouts fit into specific roles for players to adopt? And how can we make guns viable while including clear drawbacks that encourage teamwork?

These are the questions we have to answer, and we’re excited to work with our players to answer those questions in the best way we can through Early Access and beyond!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1843840/Rogue_Point

In this initial briefing, we'll be covering off some of the basics of Rogue Point, answering a few commonly asked questions that we've seen since the announcement, and sharing how you can keep up-to-date with Rogue Point!

But first thing's first...

We are Crowbar Collective, an independent game development studio with team members all over the world! We started life as an all-volunteer team who created Black Mesa, the award-winning re-imagining of Half-Life. After Black Mesa's success, we wanted to create our own IP and here we are with Rogue Point! Joining us on this journey is our publisher, Team17, a veteran of the indie publishing space who have worked on several fantastic FPS titles like Hell Let Loose and Trepang2!

Rogue Point is a cooperative shooter with rogue-lite elements that challenges you and your friends to tackle difficult PvE missions in your fight to destroy MERX, international mercenaries who will do just about anything for the right price!

In Rogue Point, it's up to you to decide how to approach each mission. Plan your strategy and tactics down to the last detail, or go in fast and hop straight into the action! However you want to play, the main focus of Rogue Point is tackling each challenge with your friends in a cooperative and team-based environment!

Rogue Point is inspired by many of the great team-focused shooter games, including SWAT 4, Rainbow Six 3, Counter-Strike, Payday 2, Left 4 Dead, and more!

We might be a bit biased, but we believe that Rogue Point ticks a lot of boxes simultaneously:

• Tactical and strategic shooter gameplay that remains accessible for all skill levels
  
• PvE cooperative focus
  
• Rogue-Lite structure with parametric design elements within each mission
  
• Persistent campaign driven gameplay
  
• Community focused Early Access, allowing you to influence the game's direction

We're excited to share more information about Rogue Point with you over the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye out here and on our social media channels for more! We'll be diving deeper into the different elements of Rogue Point's gameplay mechanics soon.

Obviously, Rogue Point is a bit of a departure away from the single player narrative focus of Black Mesa, and we've had a few questions from the community asking why we chose to make this shift for our next project. During the development of Black Mesa, we aspired to add co-op to the game, but were never able to. Rogue Point is an opportunity to expand upon that desire, by making an intuitive tactical shooter that you can play with friends. The rogue-lite aspects create that extra layer of challenges and replay-ability that really excite us as developers!

Yes! You can certainly play as a single player. At this stage of development, we're not planning to add AI teammates to fill out gaps in your team, but we're keen to listen to community feedback on things like this. Each mission will be balanced for player count too, ensuring that single players will not be punished. If you are a solo player who'd like to player with others, you’ll be able to partner up with other players via matchmaking that don’t have a full group if you wish. Our Discord will also have a channel that can assist in finding someone to link up with in real time!

Early in development, we decided to use hand-crafted map layouts instead of procedurally generated maps. We feel that shooter mission design is incredibly important, so we wanted our designers to be able to focus in on that. Having said that, there are many random elements within these designed layouts to keep players on their toes and ensure that each mission is unique!

Nope! Rogue Point uses peer-to-peer connections and doesn't require dedicated servers to play with your friends. The game also doesn't require an active connection and can be played solo in Steam Offline mode.

Follow Rogue Point on X: https://x.com/PlayRoguePoint
Join the Crowbar Collective Discord: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective
Join the Rogue Point subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RoguePoint/
Find out more: https://www.playroguepoint.com/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1843840/Rogue_Point