Project Reperio

Hey all. Let's get things started.

What's this?

Project Reperio is the temporary name for a game that I've just started working on. If you're wondering who I am (I'm fairly new here on TIGSource), go have a look at my post on the Introduction Thread

Right now, I'm on working on the game on my free time - however I intend it to become, at some point, my full-time job. I'm planning that point to be between August and early next year. Until then, I'm focusing on building a team and a prototype that I'll be using to get some financing or a publishing deal.

But what's the game?

The main intention behind the project is to create a whole world for the player to explore: civilizations to discover, cultures to assimilate, secrets to unearth. I want to leave the player in this foreign, occult universe, and give them the opportunity to learn about it by themselves. The concept lies on intrinsic motivation and gratification, and emergence: the narrative will unfold, acquire meaning through the player's actions, choices, and, above all, interpretations.

Wait - this is all fancy theory! What do you mean?

Let me give you an example. Here's one situation that I'd like to be representative of the game. The player could wander into an attic and find an old book about a painter who lived centuries before... that would then open up new discussion topics with NPCs - don't think of it as anything other than simple conversation, there won't be 'quests' or anything of the sort. The player could then get really interested about this painter, and decide to learn more and find places where she's lived, or landscapes that served as inspiration; and, while in the process of finding out more about the life of the painter, could stumble upon a lost, forgotten masterpiece, and, for instance, offer it to a museum.
This example is something that's embedded within our own world, for clarity's sake, but in Reperio there might not be attics, museums, and painting might not even be a thing.

What's important to note is that I'm walking a thin line between authored and emergent content: the painter, the book, the conversations all need to be created by the authors (there will be no procedural generation) but the narratives emerging from this density of overlapping cultural and societal elements will all be built and imagined by the players.

And how do you actually play? What's the gameplay?

Reperio is first and foremost about discovering, learning and assimilating all the laws that govern its world. The experience I want to create is one of wonder, I want the player to dive into the myths and the places, and be rewarded by the feeling of somehow forging their own place within it all.
As a result, what you would traditionally call 'gameplay' is not the priority - and I think there will actually be no recurring game mechanic. Just exploration. When you look at Fez, that's similar to what I want to achieve, if you consider the world-flipping thing to be above all a way to give deepness to a 2D world (and not a puzzle mechanic). There will be no 'combat sequences', no 'dialogue systems' - ideally I will find a way to interact with the world that will cover every situation, pretty much like in point'n'click games, pointing and clicking is the one thing you do but it can serve a lot of functions within the game.

One thing I'm currently pondering the implications of is the addition of 'tools', like an in-game map (which will obviously need to be player-drawn), journal, inventory... I must think carefully about each of these things, as if we implement any I want them to feel 'true' while not being 'cumbersome'. There's a good chance, for the map and journal, that we'll just encourage player to use their own notepad. As for the inventory, I'm conflicted between "inventories suck" and "well, if there's an inventory, we can give weird and mysterious artifacts to players and they'll have to find out what they're for".

What are the game's looks, atmosphere, feeling?

Unfortunately I don't have anything that I can show yet. I'll post concept art asap, just to show you the general atmosphere.

Regarding the new method of representation - there's first-person, third-person, side-scrolling 2D, top-down, isometric... I want to find something else. We are already working on several prototypes and will show them as soon as they're convincing enough. It will definitely be mostly 2D though.

Is it sci-fi? fantasy? steampunk?

Neither. Those genres, and pretty much any genre I can think of, stem from fantasized versions of humanity's history - we're not talking about humans in Reperio. The game's world is grounded in our reality - that means the same physical and chemical laws apply - but everything will be conceived from the ground up: the environment's properties and climate, the evolution of living organisms to a point where they organize into civilizations, the birth and development of various cultures... What's the state of technology and science and art in this world? That's something that'll need to be answered logically. So the thematic genre will, hopefully, grow naturally from the world itself. You can't expect 'knights' or 'robots' or 'zeppelins' or whatever.

What's in the world will be there if and only if it makes sense within the world's rules - or at least, that's the objective, but it's probably unattainable, so we'll just try to get as close as we can. The challenge we'll face will be to constantly question any preconceptions inherited from our own humanity. Another thing to consider is that, inevitably, Reperio's world will be a commentary on our own, whether we want it or not. So it'll have to be conceived with that in mind.

What other games are kinda related/an inspiration?

Starseed Pilgrim, Fez, Sword & Sworcery, Proteus. Driving the Mako on deserted planets in ME1. Listening to the folkloric music in FFCC. Reading about legends in old-looking tomes in FFT. I think I could also mention Miasmata and Katabasis, but even though I have both I haven't had the chance to play them yet. Haven't played Year Walk or Hiversaires either, but they could probably be linked to this project as well.

What's the current state of the game / the next steps?

For now, as I said, it's a side project. I'm working on it with the help of a friend of mine. I'm looking to assemble a team of 4-5: one programmer, two artists, one composer and myself (design, writing).

The immediate goal is to build a short demo that I'll be able to show in order to get some financing, either via a publisher (preferably) or Kickstarter. This will enable us to work on the game full-time while still getting stuff to eat.

What I'm working on currently is the wiki, where I slowly build the world, and write everything. It's a pretty huge task, so it's gonna be several months until there's enough information (and it will never be complete). My friend, who's the programmer (for now at least), is working on building prototypes to try out various representation methods.

What I need the most is concept art - I might have found someone who'll help me with that.

If you're interested in the project, or would like to contribute in any way, let me know!

That's it!
Thanks for reading. Any kind of feedback is welcome.