Niklas Fegraeus, Creative Director of Modoyo’s Heart Electric – Interview Series

Brace yourselves…developer Modoyo is rustling up a brand-new team-based first-person shooter—Heart Electric—which, from the sounds of it, will look to fuse the vibrant art style of Overwatch with an invigorating hero-centric combat system. If that sounds like you’re idea of a good time, then be sure to read on as we plunge into the details with creative director, Niklas Fegraeus.

Heart Electric is channeling its energy into the digital heart of squad-based shooters, and we’re all for it! And yet, it seems that there’s still quite a lot we don’t actually know about the hero-centric IP. So, tell us about it. How would you describe Heart Electric?

Niklas: Sure, Heart Electric is basically an action version of a 4-player Chess game. You and your team needs to figure out what plays to make in order to drain the other teams’ resources.

There are plenty of things familiar to fans of the genre, such as smartly using abilities and moving as a team, but Heart Electric’s new format challenges you to a new game of knowledge and tactics. With so many opponents looking to benefit from any situation, there are some very new things to consider in order to make the right play.

Presumably, Heart Electric will accommodate several class types and other exclusive features. Please could you tell us a bit more about the characters that will flesh out the roster, as well as what each of these heroes will specialize in?

Niklas: Specializing your playstyles and coming up with your tactical approach is very much part of the fun of Heart Electric. Our heroes have their abilities tailored for different class play as you’d expect, like offense, recon, support etc, but weaponry and class modifications are separate and fully customizable.

You and your friends can build a stealth team with suppressed sounds, close range weapons and use heroes with good recon abilities for example. But, you can also flip that completely and instead build a hyper aggressive movement team for example.

You’ve mentioned things like “Hearts” and “Energy” in earlier elevator pitches. Could you tell us more about how these two things will work on the battlefield?

Niklas: Energy is the resource everyone needs to stay in the game. When you run out of it, it’s all over. The game features many ways to gain, build and even steal Energy from your opponents, and Hearts are big Energy batteries that can give your team a big boost if you successfully manage to claim and protect them. Taking a Heart will undoubtedly make other teams come for you, so you need to be smart about it.

We’d love to know more about Heart Electric’s art style. Tell us, what inspired the vibrant colors and adolescent aesthetic?

Niklas: Oh, we’re inspired by tons of things! We love the expressive character designs of games like Street Fighter and Overwatch, as well as the stunningly beautiful colors from shows like Arcane and movies like Spirited Away. There’s just something so appealing about being surrounded by vibrant colors, and in a game where you need to navigate quickly and keep track of where other players are, having strong visual themes is very helpful for gameplay.

We’re real suckers for tips when it comes to first-person shooters. Tell us, is there anything we should know about the game or its progression system before dipping into the hot seat?

Niklas: A great tip for being successful at Heart Electric is to collaborate first and foremost. It’s really a game where your ability to play as a team is going to be extremely important for success. Another tip is to really learn how to master the Flux, which is our magnetic mechanic. Basically, every hero in the game can interact with metal, allowing you to do a lot of creative stuff like placing things in clever ways or pulling yourself towards metal objects. Watching someone who is really good at the game is like watching a combination of Spiderman and Magneto!

Do you mind us asking where Heart Electric currently is in terms of its development? Are we likely to catch more of it before year’s end, perhaps?

Niklas: We are in pre-alpha development right now, meaning we still have a few of the bigger features left to implement before we start doing our big polish and performance fixes. So, there’s still some things left to do and we really want to take our next steps together with our community. It’s always a great challenge to try and create something new, so player input around features and balancing are essential to getting it right.

We certainly wouldn’t want to miss a beat on the next stage of the game’s development. Could you kindly share the best possible way for us to stay connected with Heart Electric?

Niklas: The best ways to stay connected, sign up to playtest on Steam and provide input is through our Discord server, so please join us there if any of this sounds like a thing you want to be part of!

Is there anything you would like to add for our readers?

Niklas: I just want to say thanks for the opportunity to present Heart Electric, and if any of you think it sounds like we’re onto something cool, please join us, play the game and share your thoughts on how to make it even cooler.

Thanks for your time, Niklas. We look forward to seeing more of Heart Electric over the coming months!

For more information on Modoyo’s Heart Electric, visit the team over on their official social channel here. You can also wishlist the game on Steam here.