Tencent Boston's development group, Stomp Games, is looking for more beta testers for Robot Rising, their new 3D robot-based action RPG!

It looks like we've entered a new age of browser-based gaming! Our good friends over at Tencent Boston's in-house development team, Stomp Games, have just announced their upcoming 3D action RPG title, Robot Rising! Build up your base, customize your robot, and start blowing up baddies for loot!

Currently, Robot Rising is still in its closed beta testing phase, but the team is looking to expand their testing community before officially launching. So if you're interested in stomping around in a killer robot, sign up on the Robot Rising beta signup page!

We also got the chance to catch up with Stomp Games' Executive Producer, Michael Fitch, to talk more about their game, so read on!

ZAM: Hello there! Thanks for speaking to us about Robot Rising!

Michael Fitch: It's my pleasure. After keeping under the radar for so long, it's great to finally be able to talk to people. We're excited to be at the beta phase and would love to get more people playing and testing the game. 

ZAM: First of all, can you give us a little detail on the game beyond your initial promise of massive firepower and furious combat? Those are great ideas to start with, but what lies at the core gameplay of Robot Rising?

Michael: At its heart, Robot Rising is an Action-RPG. Fast-action combat leads to looting cool new gear, and that, in turn, leads to improving your robot and blowing up more enemies (while searching for cool new gear!). We've also put a little twist in the classic formula by adding a base of operation, where you can use the resources you find to build your own gear, giving you more customization options as well as making you less dependent on the dreaded Random Number Generator.

Another fun thing about Robot Rising is that you're not limited to holding two weapons like a puny human; our advanced robot chassis can support up to four weapon platforms, as well as a variety of sensor arrays and CPU mods. With five different types of mobility, over 20 chassis, and dozens of types of guns, there's a huge variety of options for indulging your robot-killing desires.

ZAM: Did you have any major gameplay influences when it came to the development of Robot Rising?

Michael: Most of the folks in the studio are dedicated gamers, so we've taken lessons from all sorts of classic RPGs, MMOs, and ARPGs. Probably the biggest influence has been Titan Quest, simply because a lot of us worked on that game in some form or other.

ZAM: Robot Rising is currently in its beta testing phases, and you've mentioned that you want to increase the size of your testers. What level of interaction do you have with your beta testers? Have they had a major impact on the development of the game?

Michael: We've had a range of interactions with our testers, from doing on-site usability and playability tests, to focus-group style discussions, to an ongoing dialogue in our forums. Up to this point, it's been a fairly small group, so we've gotten a fair number of bugs fixed and quite a few quality of gameplay improvements implemented based on their feedback.

Looking forward, we'd like to have much more involvement from our testers and our players; we provide entertainment as a service to them, so the future direction of the project is going to have a lot to do with what they like, what they don't like, and what they want to see in the future. Part of why we're pushing to get more beta testers so quickly is that there is no substitute for real player feedback. Given the level of activity and involvement that the ZAM community has with games, we're really hoping to hear a lot from them, and we're going to use that feedback to evolve Robot Rising.

ZAM: There's no skirting around the stigma that casual games have in the industry, so let's just get right to it: will Robot Rising have something to offer to players who want a little more depth to their games?

Michael: Absolutely. Casual games, for the most part, have been targeted at a very different audience than the retail game market. There's a reason for this stigma, because a lot of these games are just time-sinks that don't provide any significant challenge beyond testing how willing you are to pester your friends. This started to change a little while back, with some games implementing deeper gaming mechanics, like PvP and strategic deployment, but in very small increments.

Robot Rising is taking that standard and blowing it away. Yes, we're played through the browser, but we're in full 3D with fast-action combat and deep RPG systems. This is more than click-to-harvest it's click-to-kill, click-to-dodge-that-turret, click-to-shield because that Champion is turning your robot into scrap metal. Making games for gamers is in our DNA; it's what we do, and this is just the beginning. We're going to take the browser-based space to places it's never been before, and we're hoping that the kind of hardcore gamers that go to ZAM - real gamers - are going to come along for the ride.

ZAM: And that's all of the questions we had right now! Thanks for taking the time to answer, and we're looking forward to trying out Robot Rising!

Michael: Thanks for talking to us! We're excited to hear what you think!

Head over to the Robot Rising beta testing signup page to get involved!