With Sorcery! 4 well underway, we're looking ahead to our next big project. After four years of adapting books - interactive and otherwise - into great, interactive reading experiences, we're looking to expand outwards a little.
A new game is a precious, fragile thing: this game doesn't have a name, and any mechanics and systems it might contain could be flung away at a moment's notice if a better idea comes along. 80 Days went through ten or so major iterations before reaching its final combination of cities, journeys, trading, health and conversations.
But there a few things we're certain of - the pillars of the game, around which we hope to build our temple.
It's going to be made in Unity. After so long making iOS-first games, this is quite a change for us, but we want to be releasing our games across as many platforms as we can.
It's going to use a next-generation version of our ink writing engine. We'll talk a bit more about this in the coming months, but ink2 takes all the best parts about ink1 and adds more flexibility and power.
It's going to use dialogue. A lot of dialogue. In every game we've made, we've found dialogue is what works the best - so much so, that we told 80 Days entirely through one character's voice.
It's about a partnership. Two characters are better than one, especially if your game is about dialogue! We discovered this the moment Jann the Minimite first appeared back in Sorcery!, and the combination of Passepartout and Fogg is at the heart of 80 Days.
It's going to be beautiful.
It's going to take you somewhere you have never been before. For the first time, we aren't adapting anything, but starting from scratch. That's exciting, but also terrifying - what if people don't like the world we've created?
That's what we know for certain so far. Discovering the rest of the game is like caving - exploring dark passages, retreating from dead-ends, and occasionally holding one's breath to swim through a flooded, darkened chamber in the hope of coming up on the other side...
We'll tell you more, once we get there.