humanity is left in question, as the Rez it so desperately depended on can now no longer be replenished. Choosing not to dwell on this the Pirates instead devote themselves to destroying every trace of the Zombie infection. Development The game was developed by Andrew Hume and Richard Clifford, who had previously shared an office for five years as technical designers at Radical Entertainment in British Columbia, Canada. They were working on the unreleased Scarface 2, the sequel to Scarface: The World Is Yours, for two years before the project was cancelled. Following this the pair worked on an undisclosed project for a year, before this too was canceled. On this Clifford stated "Having years of your life flushed because of a graph projection and watching 60 of your friends get laid off can destroy the magic feeling." Soon after the second project's cancellation they shared their ideas for a debut video game of their own making, whereupon they left Radical Entertainment and formed MinMax Games. Taking on development of S.P.A.Z. required a full-time commitment from both men. As a result of this, neither received any kind of payment for a period of twenty two months. The project was initially planned to take six months. The self-funding nature of the project eventually required the developers to use the equity of their homes in order to continue. The development of a game through a two-man independent studio as opposed to being part of a much larger team offered both positive and negative changes. Because Hume and Clifford lacked the staff resources of a larger company they were forced to take on tasks which would have been handled by a more specialist staff member should they still been employed at Radical Entertainment. Decision making, however, required short conversations and agreements rather than meetings and risk assessments, simplifying this facet of development. S.P.A.Z. was modeled on video games from what the developers consider "..the golden age of gaming..", including series such as X-com, Star Control and Mechwarrior, but given "..a modern twist." Various aspects of these titles and others were combined to form S.P.A.Z. The top-down perspective space combat aspect was influenced by Star Control, the physics and emphasis on craft design from Mechwarrior was added to this to form the base of the game. The components for spacecraft, it was decided, would need to be unlocked during play. The role-playing game style