ESP Games was a small company run by David Addis (me) from about 2010 to 2018. We released “Miasma: Citizens of Free Thought” in 2010 and “Miasma 2: Freedom Uprising” in 2012, on Windows (in some storefronts like GamersGate) and Xbox 360 (in the shortlived Indie Games section).
I would have loved to release them on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade at the time, but it was much harder to get products on Steam back then, and I couldn’t pull the right strings to get it on XBLA.
Good news, though! Both games have finally made their way to Steam, and are available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Miasma 1 is a fairly typical turn-based strategy game, mixed with a story with some choices that affect the plot. I wrote this almost entirely on my own, in my spare time while working at Lionhead, so I was pretty pleased to get it finished at all.
I had some help, of course. A friend called Chris Cummings wrote a handy Debug menu which saved time while testing and iterating, and two artist friends, Gareth Sissons and Elliot Upton designed the UI graphics and other art, like this game cover. A lot of friends helped test and refine the game with their feedback, too.
Miasma 2 followed in the same vein as the first game, but added some “Frozen Synapse” style tactics where you plan all your orders in advance, and execute them all in one go. The enemy AI moves at the same time, which can make some interesting tactical situations where you try to cut them off.
For this title, I had a lot of help from my friend Pete Lewis (also a Lionhead employee at the time) who completely rewrote the renderer and devised a neat deferred rendering solution. That’s why this game looks so much better with the shiny, reflective surfaces and cool rain effects.