New Horror Adventure On The Horizon!
 

Hey there AG'ers. Since I'm not announcing a new game "per se" but merely teasing you with secrets and mysteries, the news wasn't picked here. So I'm personally letting you all know about this until the big unveil within the next few months.

So, Senscape Interactive is up with a brand new website, forums and three mysterious projects on the horizon. One of them is a horror adventure that will undoubtedly surprise and terrify you, currently dubbed Unnamable Project. To make it short: this is exactly what fans of Scratches have been waiting for.

I invite you to visit the website right here: http://www.senscape.net

You may also join our forums which have exclusive materials from Unnamable Project for registered users: http://www.senscape.net/forum/

Finally, you can read the whole PR right over here: http://www.senscape.net/press/PR_Senscape_090410.html

Hope you enjoy the news so far, and do stay tuned for more exciting things! :)

Wooo... seems very interesting! I loved Scratches :D

I'll register to the forum and take a look around :)

Thanks!

Awesome news. Scratches is one the best adventure games in recent years. :)

Even though Scratches scared me so much that two years after having played it I am still to afraid to replay it, I think this one willl be amazing to play as well. The atmosphere on the site breathes something Scratches-like as well. And if it has as strong a plot as Scratches then I'll definately give it a try!

Ooh, Scratches was awesome!
The website is absolutely making me shiver!
How long do we have to wait for this game? :D

We are very enthusiastic about this project and it's truly amazing to see that you are as well :)

Unnamable Project is bound to meet even the most wild expectations and I really mean that. We're been working on the game for a long time and expect to complete it within the next year. It builds on the same philosophy of Scratches, both in terms of gameplay and style. Puzzles are going to be more forgiving this time though. No more "aimlessly wandering around".

Believe me when I tell you that this is going to be huge, almost three times as large as Scratches, and will boast one of the most terrifying and menacing atmospheres ever experienced in adventure games. Yes, we're very confident :7

This is the best news since, well, forever :) Scratches is one of my all time favorties.

Sorry, i'm confused... are you someone who worked on Scratches? (Nucleosys wasn't it?) or are you jsut saying that game is your inspiration?

Great news! I loved Scratches and it looks like the Unnameable Project will be exceptional as well. Can't wait!

Scratches was amazing. This looks to be in the same mold. I love it.

I was wondering the same thing. But then I checked the PR link in the first post, and I noticed that "Senscape Interactive is the creation of AgustÃ*n Cordes, better known as the designer and director of the cult classic and award-winning Scratches horror adventure."
:)

Judging by the user name, I guess OP is AgustÃ*n Cordes himself. :)

That he is.
Cellar Of Rats, responsible for the music in Scratches, is also on board (albeit in a different role, for a different project it seems) as well as a number of artists, some with Oscar-winning credentials.
I R licking my chops in anticipation ;).

Yup, that's right. Sorry, this is my blogger alter ego :P

What will the hardware requirements be? Hopefully us that dont have a super powered pc will be able to run the game.

We're going to great extents to make this work as best as possible on lower-end systems, but keep in mind that the game is going to be quite graphically intensive. I'm particularly talking about a very dynamic visual style with shaders and stuff.

If its 3D (speaking purely in terms of graphics) we are probably $crw3d! Although I think Intel MGA on my HP Laptop may run it quite well.

Great news!
I loved the horror of Scratches although I remember having a bit of a problem to play it due to motion sickness.
But the environment, story and the scary parts were great. It scared me to pieces, to the point of screaming out loud! I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to such a scare once again. :D

YAAY This is great news!! I love Scratches is one of my favorite games and the scariest one for me, which is to say a lot because I don't usually get scared with games, but the atmosphere from this one really captivated me. And I would love this opportunity to congratulate Agustin himself :D I'm really looking forward to this :9~

Ah! Good stuff then.

Certainly from the very small amount of material on the website this looks like my kind of game.

As well as instantly thinking of the obvious Lovecraft ('the unnameable' is a Lovecraft story of course) reading the little text scraps that were interspersed with the creepy pictures also evoked Mark Danielewski's novel 'House of Leaves' for me.

I usually like horror games but since I'm relatively new to adventure games I never played Scratches. Where can I buy it? I mean besides ebay?

The website is terrifying. I'm so glad to hear that this project is underway... when I heard that Nucleosys shut down it was a huge disappointment. This is really great news, although I'll probably be miserably scared throughout most of the game! Scratches was fantastic.

The music is AMAZING. Atmosphere is so crucial and Scratches nailed it perfectly.

I'd get it from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Scratches-Dire...1322378&sr=8-2

You may also want to try searching for "scratches director's cut digital download" on google, and see if you consider reliable any of those who provide it as digital download. I usually choose digital download solutions only if they are provided by the developer itself, which is what I did for Machinarium, Tales of Monkey Island, Dark Fall etc..
I tend to avoid third party providers of digital downloads. :)

I had no problems running Scratches on my pc. Will this new game have the same hardware requirements.

Thank you all for the incredibly enthusiastic comments! I promise with all confidence that you positively won't be disappointed with this game. However, keep in mind that if you were scared by Scratches you might want to check your heart before tackling this one :devil:

Hardware-wise, we're doing all that we can keep requirements low, but it definitely will require more horsepower than Scratches. Right now we're looking at a 1.6 Ghz CPU and a decent graphics card (so far, I've been testing it successfully on an integrated Intel chipset).

Keep in mind these are only early tests and specs may change for the better or worse. Also, by the time this will be released a 1.6 CPU is going to be very low :P

Finally, the engine will operate similarly to Scratches, that is, panoramic rotation -- except we're making it look like actual 3D. You'll see what I mean! :)

Keep the system requirements/shiny graphics low and story & atmosphere high and everything will be OK.

It's all right as long as you don't scare us with such things as zombies suddenly jumping out of closets, but rather with creepy atmosphere (music, lights, angles of camera,... like in AMBER for instance). If a game makes you feeling scared of something you only expect, that's the ticket (in my opinion, of course).

Nice graphics is fine as long as there's enough content behind it. We adventurers (I believe) do not care for graphics so much as the fans of other genres do.

BTW, I liked the graphics in Scratches a lot. It was a great game in every recspect actually, and I only have some slight complaints storywise: a couple of loose ends which you might (as well) have polished in the Director's Cut - I don't know that since I didn't play the DC.

that website seems very cool and creepy so far.

@zobraks: i enjoy zombies that jump out at you. just creepy atmosphere where not much happens and just makes you THINK something will happen is sort of disappointing as well, it's like "what was all the build up for?". my dream horror game would have about: 70% atmosphere, 30% things jump out at you

Hullo! You may want to talk for yourself there! :P ;)
But true, without content, 3D graphics make only sense if the game is of the sort where your name is Ramirez, and you get bossed around the field by your sargeant. Conversely, in the case of adventure games, graphics are not a good substitute for story, but I'm firmly convinced that they can be an excellent addition. I can't see how good content along with excellent 3D graphics can't make a successful game.

The trouble with 3D graphics redered in real time on the gamer's machine is that it's often inconsistent in quality. Such inconsistency is observable within the same game, but often even within the same frame.
As an example for the former case, consider how even a high-res texture will inevitably appear "smudged" when viewed close up. The game you're playing may have wonderful 3D graphics, but as soon as you smash by accident into a wall, the texture reveals its interpolated nature, which really spoils the atmosphere. Even modern techniques of bump-mapping etc. don't help much on close-ups. This is rather irrelevant if the game is an FPS (where atmosphere may be important as well.. but if you don't get yourself away from that wall quickly, you may have your head blown apart by the odd sniper), but in adventure games... it can really spoil the experience.
On the other hand, prerendered graphics (both backgrounds and panoramic nodes) guarantee a certain degree of homogeneity in quality throughout the game.

This is why, if a developer chooses to go full-3D, he/she can't really start making compromises. If an adventure game has to be realtime 3D, making the game compatible with older hardware is not an option.
I'm not sure what AgustÃ*n means by "except we're making it look like actual 3D" (and, indeed, it's not the time to be sure about anything, considering that the project is still in its early stages), but it surely sounds interesting. Perhaps he has found the balance between real time 3D and prerendered nodes? Only time will tell! :D

I am talking mainly for myself, but the accent is on "as the fans of other genres do". I didn't mean that adventurers don't care about graphics at all. :)

It's OK, but you have survival horror games/shooters to play ;), and I prefer something more like an adventure.

Didn't a lot of your so called "Adventure" fans think that Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island was going to be better than ToMI just because the "graphics" looked better? I do agree with the content part, but remember, not all games fail to utilize graphics as Still Life 2 did.

Sure, but didn't Barrow Hill have that creepy atmosphere similar to zombies popping out? I couldn't complain though. Scratches and Barrow Hill were games that genuinely scared me. lol Not even silent hill or resident evil match that level of creepiness.

Looks great........ I cant wait....... woo-hoo :)

Well, certainly good graphics and believable atmosphere go hand in hand, at least when it comes to horror games. You can't expect to become immersed and haunted if what you have around are crappy graphics. This is debatable and I'm sure that we could come up with exceptions to the rule, but in our case with Unnamable Project we really want you to feel like you're inside this very sinister and dreadful place - after all, the tagline of the company is "Escape your reality" :P

Of course, you're all very correct and we wouldn't worry that much about the graphics if we weren't 100% sure that the story will deliver -- and I'm positive that it will.

No things that "jump out at you" though. We're still going for the psychological horror this time and a very unsettling atmosphere. That said, expect to be shocked and disturbed in a way that you never thought a game could make you feel.

I don't know, Agustin-"Blackstone Chronicles" did a good job at shocking and disturbing, and it's hard to beat that. ;)

I liked "Scratches" a lot, and can't wait for this new project. And I'm glad you are still going for atmosphere and not "pop out scares".

Blackstone Chronicles is certainly one of my references. And thank you for the compliment! :)

Scratches did have some truly amazing scare moments though. The fact that they were few and far between was definitely a crucial aspect to their effectiveness, but that bit in the furnace was a good example of a "jump" (or pop-out scare) moment that was completely justified.

I hope that this new game has some great scary payoffs to all the unsettling atmospheric dread as well. I don't think anyone should be worried about Agustin & co. going the route of cheap scares though. I mean, come on, give the guy a break! Scratches was likely the best horror experience, in any medium, I've ever had. Granted, I'm not a fan of the horror genre in general, but it definitely got me interested in playing other scary games — been working through Barrow Hill on and off for several months now, and am thinking about trying the Dark Fall series. Whoops, there I go on a tangent.

As for the 3D-esque thing, sounds great to me. While I understand why gamers would resent something that's too powerful for their machines (and adventure gamers are particularly notorious for not keeping their computers up to date, myself partly included), I think it's entirely up to the developers to choose what technologies they believe will best serve their artistic vision, and if it excludes some from being able to play until they get a better system, so be it.

Although I believe art should be enjoyed by many, I think it's more important that it not be stifled.

I loved Scratches and can't wait to see more about the upcoming game!

I'm hoping that you can get both old-computer users and us folks who like more modern graphics both satisfied with a game that has nice scaling in its graphics. Personal opinion - If in doubt, I support more modern graphics over a more retro look.

Can't wait! Scratches was one of my favorite adventure games of the past decade, I'll be on board with a first-day buy.

Thanks to the very observant Mr. Von Knudenberg, some intriguing, teaserish insight into the game has been unveiled:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNkUcXPr8BY
As Knud rightly points out, notice the resemblance of the character (and name of channel owner "Leonard Huntings") to a certain "Lenny".

Also, Hanwell Mental Institute?

NOW I'm excited! This game can't come soon enough! More teasers please, Agustin!

Has there been any hint of a prospective release date? Not being impatient or anything - just curious.

The website and that new video really have be giddy with anticipation (and fear). Agustin Cordes really knows how to tell a tale of true horror!

Don't think so, only a 'progress update' from less than a month ago:

There is something of a date concerning another project though, Kinesis (quote from August 2009):