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Lucas Lagravette
SYBERIA: THE WORLD BEFORE
Tell us about your game and why you decided to develop it
Syberia: The World Before continues the critically acclaimed point & click series created by author and art director Benoît Sokal in 2002. Storywise, it follows the third episode and continues to develop the arc of the series’ main character: Kate Walker. Benoît brought on the table a plot that immediately gave us the urge to develop it as a new game. It is both a more intimate and tragic story, with a slightly darker touch. We wanted it to be an adventure game with a taste of historical drama and detective story. In terms of mechanics, gameplay, and visuals, we want this episode to go back to the roots of the series but also to modernize it in a way that transcends – without denying – what made the first episode so unique.
What makes your game unique?
It combines an updated vision of what we think should be a modern point’n click with a truly unique story, both mature and driven by Benoît Sokal’s universe. We want it to offer what narrative-driven and 3D puzzle games can both provide at their best.
How long has this been in development, how long will it take to complete?
The game entered full production about two years ago – and before that, we had another couple of years of conception and preproduction. The team is currently working very hard to complete the game within a few weeks.
How large is the team? Oleg Smirnov, At full capacity, we are about 30 or 40 people executive producer
working on the project, including freelancers. We also have partners all around the world that support us on different levels of production.
What were the game’s design pillars?
Our first pillar was of course Benoît Sokal’s enchanting universe (the automatons, the melancholic steampunk ambiance, the fantastic fauna…) and how it could be completed by Inon Zur’s gorgeous music. That leads to the next pillar that was the sense of voyage and exploration we needed the game to provide. We want the players to feel like they are discovering a fantastic world that feels both similar and new – what Benoît called a “sidestep with reality”. The plot was of course another pillar, how every interaction and action we ask the players must make sense and contribute to telling our story. We want the exploration, the puzzles, and the cutscenes to be so intricate and consistent together that the transitions between them seem invisible and smooth. And Kate Walker, as a character, was also one of our strongest pillars. The Syberia series was always the story of her emancipation and we wanted this episode to be a major step in that evolution. Finally, the puzzles were our last main pillar, how our amazing team of designers could make them unique – both visually and in their resolution –, complex to solve and fun to play – especially by playing on the different periods of history and the rotation between Kate and our new playable character, Dana Roze. gameplay. For the puzzles, The Room game series was one of our main references regarding immersion and immediate responsiveness. And as I said earlier, the first Syberia game was our main reference about what feeling we want the game to convey.
Who do you think the audience is?
We believe that all types of players would be able to enjoy the game and not only people who already know the Syberia games. Syberia: The World Before is the best entering door for all people who want to enjoy an amazing journey through time and continents, in a deep and immersive narrative and adventure story, following Kate Walker and the threats surrounding her across her adventures.
Why did you choose to develop the game in Unity?
That was a technical choice made by our engineers. Back then, a new version of the engine was released and it offered plenty of tools that matched our visual and narrative needs. When I see the results today, it looks like it was a wise choice!
Do you have a release date?
Syberia: The World Before will be released digitally on PC (Steam, EGS, GOG) on December 10. In order to deliver the best versions possible, the game will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch in 2022, including physical copies in addition to limited and collector editions.
What inspirations does the game pull from?
Modern story-driven games such as Life is Strange, Telltale’s Walking Dead series & Until Dawn inspired us by the way they intricated story and
From top: Jamel Ziaty and Mounim el Meziani
HISTERA: FALL OF HUMAN
What makes your game unique?
What makes Histera unique is that the map our players fight on constantly transforms during gameplay. We call this feature “The Glitch.” When a section of the map glitches it will procedurally re-generate into terrain from one of three distinct historical time periods. This not only changes the aesthetic of that section, but the functional layout of the terrain itself. The weapons that were available within that section will be glitched away and unique weapons that belong to the new era will spawn in, allowing only the most adaptable players to succeed.
How long has this been in development, how long will it take to complete?
Histera has been in development for over two years now. We are aiming to enter early access at the end of Q2 2022. But even going into early access we want Histera to have a polished foundation. We want our players to develop a clear understanding of our vision for Histera and providing them with a stable build that’s fun to play will drastically improve that understanding and keep players around for the long term. Taking community feedback into account as Histera grows towards full release is a key part of our strategy. Player input generated during the early access period will assist us in deciding on additional features and help guide us on how to get creative tools into our community’s hands further down the line. But due to the uncertain nature of what that feedback will be and how long the necessary work may take - we don’t have a set date for full release yet.
How large is the team?
As the scope of the game grew exponentially, so did the team. Over the past two years we have garnered a sizable team of 70+ professionals for our development, art, and design groups. Those three teams are currently hard at work building up the game into a refined enough state for us to go into early access.
What were the game’s design pillars?
Rapid Combat: Fast-paced action that’s easy to get into and challenging to master. Keeping the most impatient and easily distracted players interested, Oleg Smirnov, excited and on the edge of their seat.executive producer
Shifting Game World: Entertaining and rapid games should be played in a world that facilitates this. Our game world is ever-changing, keeping players alert, forcing them to adapt, and making sure no two games ever play out exactly the same way.
Versatile Weapons: Diverse and multipurpose weapons enable unpredictable and exciting combat. Having weapons interact with one another and making them suitable in various situations enables players to tactically deploy combinations of weapons that suit their preferred playstyle. This also allows for deeper combat for players to explore and avoids functional redundancy in the weapon pool.
Shared with Friends: Shared fun is double the fun. That’s why we do everything to assist players in growing a great and thriving community.
Entertaining for all: Whether you are a noob or a veteran, we provide a fun experience for players regardless of expertise, background, or age.
What inspirations does the game pull from?
We draw our inspiration from all corners of the FPS genre; Call of Duty, Battlefield, CSGO/ Valorant and Overwatch are several games we often use for reference. Though we always try to make sure that we will offer a unique experience. Our glitch mechanic forces us to look at our inspirations through a different lens and restructure certain mechanics to fit the gameplay opportunities that the glitch creates. Even though we aren’t headed in the tactical shooter direction, it still offers a lot of insight to see what they do and try to understand why they do it.
Who do you think the audience is?
As mentioned, we’ve drawn our inspiration from many esports games on the competitive multiplayer scene. Therefore, we naturally consider those fanbases to be a massive part of our core target audience. But our aspirations don’t end there. Our aim is to expand our audience overseas to the US as well as the Asian pacific. From everyone who is getting tired of running around the gulag to CSGO fanatics looking for a new challenge - we are aiming to create a game that will be competitive enough, creative enough, and unique enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with those giants. We have great ambitions, and we are sure that we will be able to reach a fanbase who can match them.
Why did you choose to develop the game in Unity?
There are several reasons for why we chose to go for Unity. First off, due to the easily accessible nature of Unity (seeing as it uses C# which is a bit easier than C++ to start with) it pulls in a lot of developers to use Unity either for starting or for continuing projects. This creates a bigger community leading to more info being available on the internet, which is always useful. There is also a lot of familiarity among developers with Unity, as they will have almost always done previous projects with Unity, or at least dabbled a bit in Unity. Then there’s the platform options that gets simplified with Unity. We can easily convert our project to other platforms, which we were planning to do from the start. We also looked at what it had to offer in keeping rendering looking great with tools like their high-definition rendering pipeline, which had everything we needed at the time of choosing.
Do you have a release date?
As I mentioned earlier, we don’t have a set date for a full release now. Early access will be a big deciding factor to help us with establishing a development timeline towards that full release. However, we as a team want to release Histera when all of us feel satisfied enough with the state of the game. Our aim is to deliver a polished, entertaining, and well-designed experience that players will want to keep interacting with for years to come, and an endeavor such as that, takes time.