Please introduce yourself and your team. How did the development of The Precinct begin?I'm Lewis Boadle, Art Director at Fallen Tree Games. We're a small indie developer based in the UK with a core team of five. The company was founded in 2012 by Joe Moulding, our Game Director, and myself after working together at Free Radical Design.We started out developing mobile games, but in 2015, we shifted the focus to PC and console development with the start of our first major title, American Fugitive. Released in 2019, Fugitive was a top-down action arcade game inspired by early Grand Theft Auto titles, where you played as a felon on the run from the law.During development, Joe and I often wondered what it would be like to experience the story from the other side, to play as the cop chasing the bad guys. At the time, it seemed like a simple idea. Six years later, here we are...What kind of world can players expect in The Precinct? What are some of the core gameplay mechanics? How did you ensure the game doesn't become boring or repetitive?First and foremost, this is not a simulator. Like American Fugitive, it is an over-the-top love letter to action games and movies, especially those from the 1980s. The game throws you into high-octane chases and shootouts, balanced with slower-paced activities such as issuing parking tickets and conducting traffic stops. You can patrol the city in a variety of vehicles, travel on foot, or take to the skies in a helicopter. You can also commandeer civilian vehicles as you deal with graffiti artists, pursue bank robbers, and confront violent gangs in firefights.The game is roughly split 50/50 between a story-driven experience and an open-world sandbox filled with randomly generated crimes. The narrative follows the player as they work alongside detectives to dismantle the gangs terrorizing the city. Along the way, they will also investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding their father's death.When responding to crimes, expect a wide range of suspect behaviors. A sweet-looking granny might suddenly pull a shotgun. A cornered criminal could hide in a dumpster, hijack a passing car, or grab a bystander as a human shield during a shootout. Routine traffic stops might spiral into high-speed chases, while gang firefights can break out without warning in dimly lit alleys. Even the most harmless-seeming civilians may be quietly nursing a deep hatred for the police.In short, we've aimed to make every shift feel unpredictable and dynamic, no matter how routine it starts.From a technical perspective, what was the development process like for The Precinct? Could you discuss any custom tools the team created? How did you approach optimization? What were the main challenges?The following technical insights were provided by one of our programmers, Harry:"One of the main optimization challenges we faced was in building a dense open world filled with interactive elements. This included physics-based props, dynamic civilians, and criminals, all of which are central to The Precinct's gameplay. These systems place a heavy load on the CPU, so most of our optimization efforts were focused on that area. Streaming destructible props and buildings, simulating roaming vehicles, running emergent crimes, and supporting a highly complex AI system that manages a wide range of behaviors and reactions were all major technical hurdles.Our early decision to use Unity's legacy built-in renderer did have some repercussions. While this choice offered the most stability and efficiency for our team, the drawback was that it limited our access to some modern high-performance rendering features. Despite the constraints, we were able to implement features like FSR upscaling, stochastic reflections, and screen space global illumination. These additions helped us achieve strong visual results, especially considering that all lighting in the game is fully real-time.Lighting, particularly at night, was another area that required significant optimization. The city features a very high density of lights from streets, shops, and vehicles, many of which use volumetric fog. Getting this to perform well involved a lot of tuning and technical work to deliver the best possible balance between quality and performance."On the tools front, we tried to find ways to speed up production wherever possible. One notable example was in creating a Building Generation Tool, which allowed the artists to assemble buildings from a suite of modular panels, at the click of a button, dynamically generating the collision and other dependencies.You delayed the game earlier, what caused it, and what improvements have you made since then? What has been the community reception so far?Actually, we've delayed the game twice. In hindsight, we were a little too optimistic about how quickly we could polish, bug-fix, and optimize the game across three platforms at the same time. With an open-world game, the potential for things to go wrong is practically endless, and we weren't willing to release anything less than the best version possible. Fortunately, our publisher, Kwalee, was fully supportive of that decision.Beyond bug fixes and polishing, we also made a number of improvements and enhancements based on the feedback we received from the demo we released in October 2024. For example, when arresting a suspect, players can now itemize the crimes to earn maximum XP. We've also upgraded the visuals, made further performance optimizations, and introduced a broad range of quality-of-life and accessibility features.There was understandably some frustration around the second delay, especially since the announcement came so close to the original release date. But as we've continued to share new footage and updates with the community, players have come around to our perspective; that the delay means a better, more refined game. Expectations are incredibly high these days, even for indie titles. We know we made the right call.What does the future look like for The Precinct after launch?Our hope is that the game is well received, giving us the opportunity to continue building on it with new content and updates. As you can imagine, we have plenty of ideas for additional crimes, story expansions, and other fun features, and the community has been incredibly vocal with their own suggestions, too.This is the most ambitious project we've ever undertaken as a studio, and we're immensely proud of what we've created. With a bit of luck and continued support, we'd love to keep growing and evolving The Precinct for an extended period.The Precinct launches on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 13th, so add it to your wishlist now.Lewis Boadle, Art Director at Fallen Tree GamesInterview conducted by Amber Rutherford