What were some of the inspirations behind ORION’s development?

The ORION franchise has been a very long time coming. And I am not specifically talking about the two game titles ‘ORION: Dino Beatdown’ and ‘ORION: Prelude’ which have been in production for the last two years now. The franchise itself dates back to 1997 and during this time we had hand crafted the overall key features and three main pinnacles to the series (Dinosaurs, Jetpacks, Mechs), the entire Trilogy (ORION 1, 2 and 3), all of the back story and lore of the universe which spans thousands of years AND a variety of other titles within the series.

We own 6 major IP’s but ORION is definitely the love child as the game designs and overall experience fit so perfectly with our company’s mentality and goal which is to create incredibly fun and unique experiences and offer them at some of the most competitive prices on the market. ORION: Dino Beatdown is going to be a great example of what we are hoping to bring to the industry both company wise and game experience wise.



Considering the caliber of fellow developers that helped create ORION, and the amount of content being made available at launch, why such a low retail price?

Spiral is a collection of people that helped bring you games such as Halo, Borderlands, Ghost Recon, Unreal Tournament, Forza Motorsport, Jade Empire and plenty of other games. We have such a crazy range of diverse minds that it really comes through and shines within our games. I couldn’t ask for a better team.

When I formed Spiral back in late 2010 I wanted to do one thing – inspire change. I wanted to change the way games were made, I wanted to change the way that developers interacted with their fans, I wanted to change the experiences that games were delivering and I wanted to do it all for less. This mentality seemed to be magnetic and attracted some of the most talented and crazy people I have ever worked with.

In many ways we are already hitting our goals. We were the first major game to use KickStarter a year before Tim Schaeffer came and revolutionized it. Our competitions and fan inclusion have already been great and are only going to get better and more diverse. We are bringing back our Play With Devs session every single Sunday which allows the fans to come play the game with us and earn any developer related achievements (Spiral Buddy – beat a game with a developer). We are going to be announcing our first competition the week of the release with another competition being announced the week after. We have plenty of these planned and can’t wait to see the fan reaction.

As you probably guessed – yes – Dinosaurs can get into fights with other Dinosaurs. In fact during our very last playtest I was getting overwhelmed by an excessive amount of Raptors and right as I was about to be finished off by one leaping at me a T-Rex came from the left-side of my screen and grabbed it mid-air and threw it to its death away from me. Unfortunately she chose me as her next target so my life didn’t last too much longer.

If this happens it will open up to more modes and play styles including Competitive Cooperative play, Racing Modes, and other over-the-top game experiences that really fit into this over-the-top action adventure game

ABILITY – “NINA” (Recon Class Only)