Roman Tsoy on PT Boats: South Gambit

Feature

Akella recently released PT Boats: South Gambit, a standalone expansion of their World War 2 naval simulation PT Boats: Knights of the Sea. We had a chat with Roman Tsoy, discussing the many facets of the game and more.

January 29th, 2011 by Josh Miller

Good day my fellow gaming pedestrians. Today I was graced with the presence of the developers from Akella to discuss PT Boats: South Gambit, the standalone expansion of their World War 2 naval simulation PT Boats: Knights of the Sea.

Hooked Gamers Greetings Roman Tsoy. Thanks for taking the time to for this interview. I hope things are going nice and smooth where you�re based in Eastern Europe?

Roman Tsoy Good Day. I am glad to start this year with the readers of Hooked Gamers, as we�ve known each other for a long time and you�ve reported on the original PT Boats: Knights of the Sea a lot. We appreciate the interest in our PT Boats series and I�ll answer your questions with pleasure.

Hooked Gamers So PT Boats: South Gambit the downloadable and standalone expansion of PT Boats: Knights of the Sea and is set during the WW2 era. What factions are available to the player?

Roman Tsoy The new addon PT boats: South Gambit is devoted to the sea battles in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. The player fights either on the Allied (USSR, England) or Axis (Germany, Italy) side. The addon includes several famous historical sea operations which took place in these seas during WW2. We added a few new ships, boats and airplanes for each of the sides, particularly for Italian fleet and that of the USSR.

Hooked Gamers How authentic are the ships in PT Boats: South Gambit, and does it boast a large quantity of ships from the era?

Roman Tsoy Of course. It is our tradition to design models of ships and other military vehicles in great detail. All the weapons were created with the help of dozens of documents, schemes, photos and video materials available from that era.

I have a great anecdote to describe exactly how much detail have been able to put into the game. We recently presented the game at a local Russian trade show. Usually the audience of such exhibitions is quite young, but one day we �detected� a group of elderly people in front of PCs with South Gambit on their screens. Coming closer we heard that they were discussing how similar our ships were to the real thing. When we started talking to them, we learned that these people were veterans of WW2 and that they had been on some of the boats in real life. We even tried to teach them how to play but that turned out to be more challenging than creating a game.

Hooked Gamers What are the additions made since PT Boats: Knights of the Sea, and how do they change the core game play elements?

Roman Tsoy Working on PT boats: South Gambit we tried to add improvements to the game�s systems while avoiding changes that would deter from the basic principles of the gameplay of original PT Boats. One of the bigger additions are minefield and torpedo aircraft that really influence the tactics and actions of big ships in particular.

Hooked Gamers The game is not only a tactical experience where you command ships as a whole, but you can also take control over individual units on ships such as a gunner and shoot down other ships and aircraft. How well does this work in an intense combat situation? I can imagine that if you take the time to control just one unit, the rest of your fleet will submerge into chaos.