Yesterday I was checking my emails when I came across a rather odd message. I opened it and found that it was in fact a indie developer telling me about a game they were working on. I was a bit confused why he contacted me, but he told me it was because of the Stealth article I wrote.
I was intrigued.
He told me that he agreed with my thoughts and that his favorite and most influential game was Thief. He said the game was heavily influenced by stealth and he wanted the game to recollect that love, as well as him putting a new twist on making a pure stealth game; but with an open world environment and the ability to use actual words as a physical item… Wait, what?
I decided to shoot him some questions about his game and got some very interesting answers.
What is “Tangiers?”
“Tangiers is the first game that our studio, Andalusian, is producing. At it’s very core, the gameplay is an homage to the first game I truly fell in love with – the game that changed my view of the medium from a pastime to a potential art form, Thief.Using that as the base canvas for our game, we’re making a dark, surreal stealth game that’s off beat, very expressive and personal, but also very much driven by player interaction.”
Who is the main character? What is your character’s motivation? Your goal?
“The main character isn’t -anybody-. The only background that exists for the main character is that s/he’s an outsider; a being that doesn’t belong to the world of Tangiers, that field of reality. We’re deliberately avoiding any exposition, story line or concrete symbolism – we’re looking at an approach that is more violent, primal in it’s expression. This is a game where what matters is actions – what you, as the character, directly do and experience, see or hear.We’re doing what we can to do away with any and all non-diagetic elements – these are surplus to the experience I want to create, elements of rationality that act to mask, dilute, the player’s reaction to the visual and emotive discourse. The game is, in many ways, a love letter to a lot of things that have had a strong effect on me – our approach to the narrative and disregard of story is very much born from the theatrical theory of Antonin Artaud. Having said that, the first thing that we’re going to do is directly contradict ourselves by putting in a little title card whenever the player enters the game; that the character is in this world to dispose of six other individuals. Why? That doesn’t matter.”
How do you plan to make the stealth work? Can you actually defend yourself if caught?
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The core of the stealth is in the vein of the Thief games. Find the right place in the shadows, stay still and you’re otherwise invulnerable… until an enemy comes walking by. Making safe passage requires a combination of patience, cunning, planning and the careful management of your limited abilities. To really emphasize the vulnerability of your position, the only element of GUI permanently on display is the light-meter.You can -technically- defend yourself if caught; a well timed attack can take out an enemy before he lands a blow on you, giving you an opportunity to make exit, but your character is weak. Two or three hits from the enemies will definitely kill you.You are, however, far more mobile than most of your foes, so if you have a planned escape route then a quick distraction… will give you a second lease at life.The part of the stealth that I’m most excited about is the mechanic that anything a character says materializes in to the world. We touched upon this with the teaser – if an alerted enemy fails to find you, and comes up with the old cliched “Guess it’s just rats” line, the words appear above his head, falling down onto the floor. You can collect these words, and throw them back into the world to serve as a distraction.Likewise, listen in on a hushed, illicit conversation, collect the words spoken, and you can then use them to unveil secrets in the world, new pathways at all.”
Why make it free roam?
“I want the player’s actions to both matter, and drive the game. Interaction – that’s what sets video-games apart from any other popular media. We’re in a state of limbo with the medium at the moment. Graphics, effects, processing, they can all create a very intense, so called “photo-realistic” experience, and a lot of the time these tools are being used to emulate cinema. Entertaining as such games are, it’s a very naive, immature approach- it seems to me as akin to if one approached cinema as merely a form of captured theatre, ignoring the rich tapestry of expression that camera angles, editing, colour correction etc provide.So in really focusing on the players freedom within the game, I guess that’s a kinda childish tantrum, a sticking our middle finger up at the current mainstream trend of cinematic gaming. Time will see whether or not I grow out of that.”
How large is the world in game? Will there be secrets and Easter eggs for those explorers that check every nook and cranny?
“I can’t give an exact size on the game world just yet, but it’s going to be pretty damn big. It’s important to note that what it will also be, is sparse.That doesn’t mean they’ll be vast, undecorated patches of landscape, but I want it to be that […] if you stop halfway between landmarks, it’ll really feel like you’re alone in the midst of a lonely, dying world. I want to avoid the open-world trope of tripping over a new mission every thirty yards.There’ll definitely be secrets and easter eggs a plenty! Some hidden, others standing out quite in the open. There’ll be unique items, minor abilities etc to be found in obscure, hard to access caves, but there’s also the levels themselves – the urban environments in the game are being built as a patchwork collage of references and nods; song lyrics imprinted on walls, stills from favorite films found through window frames, little snippets of architecture from our city making their way into terraced facades.”
What inspired this?
“[It] was born from an intense dissatisfaction with the direction my life was going; the general misery the underlies unemployment, redundancy and a blossoming career in retail.
The game itself? It’s something that’s been in the back of my mind back through the past three years. It started off with discovering the 2000AD comic strip “Shakara!”. Shakara!, in it’s first series was essentially a very minimalist, almost dialogue free montage of a mysterious being fighting bizarre alien creatures. I toyed with the idea of how this would play as a video game, and idea gradually absorbed my general interests, and what I wanted to express in art, into becoming Tangiers.”
What is it that you are trying to tell the players in making this game?
“I don’t think that I’m trying to convey any concrete ideas, or messages – in fact I’m trying my best to stay away from doing that at all.What I want to do with Tangiers is express emotion and feeling […] interact with those of the player.”
Alex’s talk about the world as well as looking at the game play makes me think of the European/Japanese Ico game cover.
On top of that, I like to see the passion he has for his game because it actually gets me psyched to see him this excited about his creation. He is not alone on this endeavor though. Joining him is Michael Wright who is struggling just as much as Alex in trying to get this game to see light.
I plan on following this game as it has piqued my interest and I want to hear more about their struggles–and hopefully a see a happy ending for them.
If you are interested in hearing more about Tangiers and Andalusian, check out their website, Facebook page and look at these pretty screenshots!
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Published: May 20, 2013 09:12 am