We have created a new video to give you an idea of the mood of the game. This is very much a teaser. No gameplay, just a general impression of what you can expect the final tone and setting to be like.
If you have the connection and machine for it, make sure you enjoy it in HD quality and full-screen.
We hope you like it.
Today I started working on object interactions, and it inspired me to write a little post about it.
A few months ago we created a prototype to see how the game would work, to find problems in the game-play as soon as possible, and to see what kind of interactions we could expect in the game. The story and puzzles were not complete at the time, so we had to extrapolate what kind of situations the player could get into.
It was, and still is running on the Android powered Galaxy Tab, and everyone we show it to is very excited about the game. The first typical comment is “Oh, i loved Monkey Island” and as soon as we mention time travel, we hear references to Day of the Tentacle.
Anyway, we’ve shown the prototype to a lot of people, and used the feedback to tweak the prototype until we were happy. Of course, this also turned the code into a mess. Every object had its own specialized code, which quickly became unmanageable. So we ditched the prototype and started from scratch. Right now I’m working on making the interaction between objects and the player, and of course it is all scriptable and general.
I have created a matrix of interactions. Whenever an object is used with another object, I put in some commands into the corresponding cell for the engine to interpret, and the magic happens. Clicking on the green_access_card now does this:
remove=green_access_card|create=inv_green_access_card
Creating a green access card in my inventory. And when I use my inv_green_access_card with green_card_reader this happens:
remove=inv_green_access_card|create=elevator_to_secretary
Which is how you open the elevator doors. Pretty straight forward, really. The objects themselves can run an animation, if they are set up to do this. In this case, the elevator doors could open. It’s awesome when it works 
We thought we had found the perfect name for our game: Future. It’s a spot-on title for a dystopian time travelling game and easy to remember too. You’d think someone would have claimed that name for a game long ago, but so far we haven’t found any games with that title.
But alas, having the perfect name is like sunbathing on the perfect spot on the beach: You quickly realize that you’re not alone… A Google search on the name will return 1.500.000.000 results, and YouTube offers half a million results. Since nobody cares to look any further than the first 10 results on a search engine, we became totally invisible. Even if you entered advanced search combinations like “Future” + “House on Fire” or “Future” + “Point and click adventure”, we were still invisible…
When a movie came out this year entitled ‘The Future‘, we finally decided to find a new name for the game. We had 3 simple requirements:
After a weekend of research and thinking, we came up with the name The Silent Age. It has that Seventies Sci-Fi feel to it and also hints at the mood of the game. Its also a nod at the song Sons of the Silent Age by David Bowie.
I have a confession to make: I’m a dedicated fan of anything remotely related to the Seventies: The clothes, the music, the furniture… Yep, it’s one of those rare decades that only gets better with age.
A lot of my inspiration and motivation for making this game has been the Sci-Fi movies of the early Seventies, like The Andromeda Strain, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Capricorn One.
One of the core features in the game is time travelling between fixed moments in the present and in the future. At some point an idea started growing in my mind – what if I moved the present from 2011 to 1971? The future time could then be set to now – fourty years later – in 2011. I decided to give it a go, and the more I worked with the idea, the more advantages spawned. Here’s a few:
It’s proven to be a great decision, which not only gives a lot of options but also adds a lot of personality to the game.
We visited Nordic Game Conference last week, where we met a lot of interesting people with amazing projects.
Meeting Minecraft developers as well as Angry Birds. Two companies which to me seem ever so opposite.
We also had a chance to see some of the up coming games.
And of course, we got to attend Nordic Game Awards 2011. Congratz to all the winners! One day hopefully we’ll be on that stage… fingers crossed.
During user testing we’ve come to realise that players have a hard time finding out which objects can be interacted with and which can’t. The iDevices don’t have mouseover, so players usually just tap any object which they think is even remotely interactable. This adds up to an awful lot of fruitless tapping, which in our opinion disturbs the game flow. Still, we want the background to have a high level of detail so the problem arises: How do we put in highly detailed graphical objects without the player perceiving them as interactable objects?
We’ve tried having interactible objects sparkling occasionally, which most user testers find to be a great help. Still, some testers are annoyed by this solution as they’d rather discover the interactable objects themselves.
We’re currently working on using colours to solve the problem. The idea is to have a general palette for the background and then highlight objects with colours outside that palette. The idea comes from EA’s Mirrors Edge which uses a similar colour system to guide the player.
Above is a sketch of a game scene taking place next to a lake at nightfall. To the left is an ambulance parked by the roadside and in the middle there’s a mailbox, a sign and a bridge leading to the small boat on the right. The colour scheme should make it pretty clear which objects are interactable: the ambulance, the mailbox, the sign and the boat.
Will it work? Only loads of user testing will tell…
This teaser does not show actual gameplay. We made it early in the process to define the look and feel of the game. It was important for us to create a world which would be interesting for players to be in before diving into game design.
