I am pleased to publish an interview with Andrew Beletsky, game designer and PR-manager at B-Cool Interactive, who was kind enough to give us some more information a the upcoming game Scorpion. We've also added some exclusive new screenshots!

1. Thank you for your time. Can you tell please introduce yourself, your team and what you're working on at the moment?

Greetings! My name is Andrew Beletsky. I'm working as a game designer and PR-manager at B-Cool Interactive. We are young (founded in 2005) but rapidly growing company composed of talented people that all have substantial experience in the CIS game industry. Cossacks series, famous STALKER, Boiling Point: Road to Hell, anticipated Disciples 3 and many more are present in our team-members' portfolios. Currently I'm working on the main character's psychic powers, balance, and of course try to keep in touch with various entertainment resources to keep gamers informed on how things are going here

2. First of all, I've noticed that you mention this game in two ways: Scorpion (The Game) and Showdown: Scorpion. Can you set the record straight? Or are you still deciding on the final name?

Indeed there is kind of mess with naming at this particular moment, so I'll try to be Spartan-short and clear now to explain this both to you and our readers. When the project was started, its first working name was Showdown. Later it was renamed to Showdown: Scorpion and at last, around half a year ago, we decided to keep only Scorpion as a name, because things that the word ‘showdown' represented at first have gone from the game. It was hard to initiate a fast renaming process - many materials had already been sent to print, thus a current situation with different names of the game followed.

In conclusion, the game is, and will be, called Scorpion. And a sheer fact you have asked about it means that re-branding is on its way!

3. Is Scorpion a pure FPS game or does it add some RPG elements? Will it be a tactical game or a "shoot all that moves" FPS?

Well, the game has both tactical and RPG elements in it, and actually is really far from ‘shoot all that moves' games like, for example, Serious Sam. RPG elements are represented by the main character's special abilities (I'll cover them slightly later in detail), their acquisition and development during the game. And you are not supposed, or better said, you can't just outgun everything you see or can meet in the game. Instead we expect a player to be creative with the tools we gave him - his specials and ability to stealth can be combined in various ways to achieve victory where it seems impossible. Thus tactics comes into play. Of course there are moments where you simply bring death and destruction to your enemies - it's an FPS after all! J

4. The gameplay footage from Scorpion looks really good. Does it use a "home-made" engine? What will the system requirements be? Any outdoor levels?

Yes, the engine, called COOLEngine was developed by our team from scratch. It also includes some third-party tools, like Kynapse Kinogon (AI and pathfinding meta-system) and Ageia physics engine. The engine is mostly tuned up for indoor and very urbanized environment and most outdoor stuff like trees, grass, clouds etc are not implemented in its current version.

Quite surprisingly there are few ‘outdoor' levels where you will go out from skyscrapers and sewers to the streets. But do not expect to see something like you are viewing in the window now - those are streets of the post-collapse world. Strong colored smog is in the air, dirt and desolation, broken windows and rusty car hulls, trash and old papers are littered everywhere. Welcome to the future, guys, one we don't want to live in.

What about requirements? They are quite usual for nowadays games, with minimal configuration set on Athlon 64/Intel PIV CPU, Radeon x1600 or GForce 6600. 1Gb of RAM is also a necessity. Recommended values are higher of course. But in general, any game will benefit from a better PC. Scorpion is not an exception.