The Novelist Ghostwrites a Tale of Love and Ambition

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
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The Novelist Ghostwrites a Tale of Love and Ambition

The Novelist is a voyeuristic ghost story about life, family, choices and achieving your dreams without pushing away the ones you love.

The Novelist is the debut indie offering from Kent Hudson, formerly of 2K Games, whose credits include Deus Ex and its sequel Invisible War, Thief: Deadly Shadows and, most recently, BioShock 2. He embarked upon the indie dream in late 2011 and has now unveiled the first fruit of his adventure, an unusual tale about a writer trying to balance his career and his family.

It's not going to burn up the mainstream charts, but the premise is intriguing. Novelist Dan Kaplan takes his family to a remote coastal home for the summer, trying to satisfy their needs as he works on the most important book of his career. Little does he know that the house is haunted, which is where you come in: You play a ghost, observing the family, exploring their memories and thoughts and ultimately intervening in their lives. But you must stay out of sight, I suppose because the Kaplans will book if they figure out their gorgeous vacation home is possessed by a spirit of the undead, and then what good will you be?

The Novelist promises "tense, first-person stealth gameplay, as the player tries to remain undetected while shaping Dan Kaplan's life," and story elements that react and change to the player's decisions and actions. That's hardly an unusual claim for a videogame press release these days but the concept is great and the trailer, for what little it shows, looks very promising.

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Hudson is offering a preorder deal on The Novelist and soundtrack for $14.99, 25 percent off the release price, and it's also up for voting on Steam Greenlight [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144549818]. It's currently slated to come out later this summer.

Source: The Novelist [http://www.thenovelistgame.com/]


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l3o2828

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Mar 24, 2011
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Life is Complicated and Sad : The Game.

Please give award.

I'm kidding of course. I want to play this simply because it looks like a different approach to adventure gaming with the puzzle being managing someones *coughmidcough* life *coughcrisiscough* and it does seem like your choices do have weight on what happens, maybe if you do extremely poor Tommy goes to walk around the beach and drowns or is raped by pedobear or something equally as tragic and deliberately dramatic. I'm kidding. Serious face now.

Bat Vader said:
Looks like a pretty fun and interesting game. I do love the idea of shaping the lives of a family for either good or ill. I think in my first playthrough I will be evil and try and get them to hate each other.
*Doesn't feel bad anymore for also thinking about doing this*
 

Bat Vader

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Mar 11, 2009
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Looks like a pretty fun and interesting game. I do love the idea of shaping the lives of a family for either good or ill. I think in my first playthrough I will be evil and try and get them to hate each other.
 

GodzillaGuy92

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Jul 10, 2012
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Stealth meets artsy, story-driven indie adventure game... Yeah, consider me hooked. Definitely gonna be keeping an eye on this.
 

The_Darkness

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Nov 8, 2010
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Hmm... The Novelist? Ghostwriting? This looks interesting, since writing is one of my main hobbies...

Woah. WOAH. A haunted house game where you play the Ghost?!

You had my attention. Now you have my curiosity...

[small]Sue me, I've been looking for an excuse to use that line for a while...[/small]
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
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so, kinda like ghost trick, except you're being a somewhat creepy stalker

10/10 would play again
 

Parakeettheprawn

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Apr 6, 2013
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GodzillaGuy92 said:
Stealth meets artsy, story-driven indie adventure game... Yeah, consider me hooked. Definitely gonna be keeping an eye on this.
Same here. I am really intrigued. Especially the fact they put genuine stealth into it -- most people only seem to think of Survival Horror or Spy stuff for stealth, but when you think about it, it could apply to so much more.