SUPER VEHICLE-001 METAL SLUG TACTICS

SNK'S METAL SLUG SERIES IS ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC RUN-AND-GUNS AROUND WITH A LEGACY AS RICH AS ITS METICULOUS 2D ART. SO WHAT CONVINCED SNK TO GREENLIGHT AN ISOMETRIC TACTICAL RPG? WE SPEAK TO LEIKIR STUDIO'S CREATIVE DIRECTOR AURÉLIEN LOOS TO FIND OUT MORE

- DARRAN JONES

Taking a classic videogame series in a new direction is always a tricky task and developers don’t always succeed. While Super Mario Kart proved that Nintendo’s plumber could easily make the jump from platforming to racing, Castlevania Judgment simply highlighted that the Castlevania fanbase wasn’t quite ready for a one-on-one fighter.

Metal Slug Tactics, an isometric tactical RPG from Leikir Studios seems like a baffling sidestep for the popular run-and-gun series, but it’s not quite as bold a change of direction as you might think. After all, strategy-based titles like Metal Slug Touch and Metal Slug Defence have proven the series has legs outside its run-and-gun roots, so in many ways Metal Slug Tactics feels like a natural evolution. Albeit an evolution that’s taken a while to arrive. “We started talking about the game around the end of 2018,” begins Aurélien Loos, creative director of Leikir Studio. “It took a long time, because at the time, Dotemu and Leikir Studio didn’t have the financial capacity to launch production. Preproduction began in March 2020, at the same time as containment for COVID!”

Aurélien also admits that Metal Slug Tactics’ distinctive artwork has also added to the game’s delay. “We’re a very small team, so producing isometric view assets takes a long time,” he explains. “From a gameplay point of view we had to iterate a lot to achieve what we were trying to do: inject run-and-gun philosophies into a tactical RPG.”

Even though the team was aware of Metal Slug