New adventure game: 8

Written by Marek Bronstring — December 30, 2003 at 11:12

Thanks to our Future of Adventure Games feature, we've been introduced to a promising new adventure game game. Developer Tale of Tales contacted us after seeing the article, and told us they're working on an innovative and artistic game that they simply call 8.

8 is a slow-paced non-violent game with a strongly poetic narrative. The story is set in multiple simultaneous versions of the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale. It has a fully explorable 3D world and -- although we've yet to see this in action -- it is said to be completely non-linear. The main protagonist in the game is a deaf mute girl. It will be up to the player to take her hand and guide her through the game world.

The game is being developed independently by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, a designer duo whose background is in art and web design. Thanks to subsidies from a number of institutes they've been able to put together an early prototype of the game, which we've been able to playtest. Although the interface is still being worked on, it looks to be an interesting mix of real-time 3D graphics and mouse-driven controls.

[image=1196] [image=1197] [image=1198]

Although the team's goals are mostly artistic, they're trying to create a regular commercial title with a mainstream appeal, and have had contact with adventure game publishers. The lead designers are now starting to work with freelance 3D artists from around the world. More information can be found on the Tale of Tales website.

8 is still a long way off, with a January 2007 release date. However, we will closely track its progress and will report back when there's more to tell.

Note: the screenshots we've included are work-in-progress.