Nullpoint Protocol Interview: Raid Boss Co-Op Roguelike

We had the pleasure of chatting with the developer of Nullpoint Protocol! “The feeling of high-level MMO raids, without the grind. Take on chaotic boss fights solo or in 1-4 player co-op, mastering complex attack patterns and evolving your build each run through randomized upgrades.”

1. What inspired your game?

Our game is inspired by the experience of raid boss fights in MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV. The idea came from one of our developers, who loves these kinds of boss fights. The problem being that usually getting to these raid bosses takes hours and hours of grinding. So we wanted to make a game that captured the experience of fighting end-game raid bosses, without having to grind for hours and hours. There’s a game that does something fairly similar called Rabbit & Steel, this was one of the main inspirations behind Nullpoint Protocol. But, we wanted to innovate on this by offering greater build freedom by not having spells locked in to certain classes, as well as by adding random events that will shake up your run.

2. What are your goals for your game?

Our main goal is to create boss fights that players genuinely want to master together. We want runs to feel intense, skill-driven, and replayable, where each attempt teaches you something new.

Long term, we want Nullpoint Protocol to be the kind of co-op game people return to with friends to improve their runs, experiment with builds, and challenge harder boss encounters.

3. How would you pitch your game in 3-5 words?

Raid bosses in a co-op roguelike

4. What advice would you give to new devs?

Prototyping and testing is essential. We spent a long time prototyping different game concepts to get to the idea of making Nullpoint Protocol, and we learned a lot from that process. A game idea can sound great on paper, but you don’t know until you actually build a working prototype. The sooner you can do that and the sooner you can get it in front of actual players, the sooner you’ll find what works and what doesn’t. Looking back, we wished that we had done more testing early on for Nullpoint Protocol, to figure out what works and what doesn’t, what’s essential and what’s fluff. That would have saved us quite a few headaches.

5. What has big your biggest success story relating to your game?

Showcasing the game at PAX West. We did this in August shortly after announcing our game. It was an early and limited build of the game, but getting it in front of thousands of people and seeing their reactions to the game in-person was incredibly valuable for us. It proved to us that the game concept works, and it showed us so many ways in which we can improve the game that we simply had never noticed as developers. The feedback we got from PAX was overwhelmingly positive and that has been a really great motivational boost for us as a team.

6. Where can folks support your game?

For now, the best way you can support our game is by playing the demo on Steam and giving us feedback! There’s only so much we can see as developers, getting player feedback is essential to making this game as good as can be. Stay on the lookout for Nullpoint Protocol releasing in April!