Brigador, the celebrated mech and sim game from Stellar Jockeys, has a successor in early access, Brigador Killers. Lead developers Hugh and Jack Monahan recently shared their philosophy on game design, particularly their aversion to explicit moralizing and their embrace of player-driven discovery.
"We were not interested in morality systems," stated Jack Monahan. "We are not interested in this sort of 'violence is bad' narrative." He critiqued games that attempt to make players feel responsible for their in-game actions, likening it to Spec Ops: The Line's infamous white phosphorus scene. Monahan argued that while Spec Ops is a strong game, its approach of directly telling players the emotional impact of their choices is less effective than emergent gameplay.
Instead, the developers draw inspiration from '90s PC classics. "The '90s PC classics often taught really special things, but not because the story said, 'Wow, violence is bad!'" Hugh Monahan explained. He cited the original XCOM as an example, where the act of selling alien corpses to fund the world's defense was a mechanical consequence rather than a narrative statement. "Ticking buttons in a spreadsheet, I go, 'Holy shit, this is kind of crazy.' But that's a natural consequence of working through the mechanics," he said, emphasizing that systems and mechanics can convey more meaning than explicit storytelling.
Hugh Monahan further elaborated on this by referencing Crusader: No Remorse, a significant inspiration for Brigador Killers. He recounted an experience where, as a child, he involuntarily shot a civilian after the character triggered an alarm. This personal revelation, driven by his own actions within the game's systems, was far more impactful than any cutscene. "I find that those moments that I personally have had all were unprompted. They were all things that were driven from my own behavior within the game, and as a result, the kind of personal revelation that can happen around it is much more powerful if I'm coming to those conclusions on my own," he stated.
This design philosophy is evident in Brigador Killers, particularly with the inclusion of civilians, a feature reminiscent of games like Syndicate. The game does not explicitly condemn killing civilians; instead, players gain currency for each civilian they eliminate. The developers noted that some players initially reported this as a bug, highlighting how the game encourages players to confront the implications of their actions without direct guidance. "We don't comment at all in the game if you're killing civilians. The only metric is that you gain $50 for every civilian kill, and we had people reporting it as a bug," Hugh Monahan shared.