Papers, Please Dev Unveils Next Project

StewShearerOld

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Jan 5, 2013
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Papers, Please Dev Unveils Next Project



Lucas Pope's Return of Obra Dinn will be a 1-bit first person mystery game.

Paper, Please was easily one of the most acclaimed indie games of 2013, earning accolades <a href=http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/papers-please>from critics and fans alike with its satisfying gameplay and unique concept. The game's many fans, in turn, have understandably been eager to see what the games creator Lucas Pope is going to do next. Those same fans will probably be thrilled to know that their days of waiting have finally paid off.

Pope, writing in a thread at the <a href=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.0>TIGSource forums, has revealed his new project which he is dubbing Return of the Obra Dinn. A "3D first-person mystery game," it will follow the efforts an East India Company insurance adjuster to recover the logbook of a derelict ship that had drifted to port with its crew missing. It's Lucas's hope that this new project will allow him to explore unfamiliar avenues of game development.

"I want to challenge myself so this'll be a very different game from anything I've done before," wrote Pope. "There'll be less creativity with the gameplay and instead I want to experiment with the rendering, story, and a few technical features. Right now I have only a rough idea about the narrative. I'm hoping to capture a compelling mystery with suspense and twists in the limited space of an old merchant sailing ship. It won't be the typical 'collect items and look for clues' structure."

While Pope has confirmed that he'll be using Unity 3D to develop Obra Dinn, he's also revealed his desire to ground the game's visuals firmly in yesteryear. "I've always had a nostalgia-softened spot in my heart for 1-bit graphics," he said. "I'd like to capture the detailed black & white look of old Mac games in a real-time 1st person game." It's a desire that he knows will come with challenges. That said, he expressed "high hopes" that he'll be able to pull it off and create something besides "an unreadable mess of dithered pixels." We will, of course, be watching eagerly to see how his plans go.

Source: <a href=http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.0>TIGSource


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Story

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Sep 4, 2013
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Sounds completely boring like Papers, Please...
...I'm sure it will be fantastic! :D

In all seriousness it is developers like Pope that have made me fall in love with the indie game market. Its always good to see fresh and innovative ideas like this game and Papers, Please exist in a world with homogeneous AAA titles.
Also, I'm such a young'n I had to look up "1-bit" graphics, I've never even heard of that before.
 

Tireseas_v1legacy

Plop plop plop
Sep 28, 2009
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There is an 80% chance I will buy this game. I have no idea what it is like beyond this blurb, but sometimes I just feel like throwing money at certain developers to see what happens.
 

DasDestroyer

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Apr 3, 2010
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You missed the "s" in Papers in the first sentence.
OT: I keep forgetting to play some of his less well-known games, apparently they're pretty good too. Hopefully this new game will be a unique experience as well.
 

Chaosian

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Mar 26, 2011
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I don't want to be an asshole, but wouldn't a 1 bit graphics system be simply white or black? There's clearly some greys there...
Perhaps it sounded better than 2 bit though.
 

DasDestroyer

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Chaosian said:
I don't want to be an asshole, but wouldn't a 1 bit graphics system be simply white or black? There's clearly some greys there...
Perhaps it sounded better than 2 bit though.
Not exactly sure how it works, but according to wikipedia this image is 1-bit:

Which, like the Obra Dinn image has black, grey and white.

Edit: Okay, makes sense.
 

hazabaza1

Want Skyrim. Want. Do want.
Nov 26, 2008
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And it won't be aaaaaanywhere near as popular as Papers Please.
Still, I should try out either of these sometime. PP has always had a lot of talk about it and this seems like it could be interesting in a sense.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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DasDestroyer said:
Chaosian said:
I don't want to be an asshole, but wouldn't a 1 bit graphics system be simply white or black? There's clearly some greys there...
Perhaps it sounded better than 2 bit though.
Not exactly sure how it works, but according to wikipedia this image is 1-bit:

Which, like the Obra Dinn image has black, grey and white.
Look closely, its not black grey and white. I'm assuming they're using white as the color and black as the default negative space (or you can reverse it, either way it works) but there's no grey there at all. Its just black (or white) pixels in varied combinations. Look close, magnify it if you have to but there's absolutely no grey colors there, just black and white pixels.

Edit: wow ninja'd.
 

Signa

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DasDestroyer said:
You missed the "s" in Papers in the first sentence.
OT: I keep forgetting to play some of his less well-known games, apparently they're pretty good too. Hopefully this new game will be a unique experience as well.
Never before has being a grammar Nazi been so applicable in these articles. I'm sure your family will be well fed and warm tonight.

OT: Color me interested. Pun not intended.
 

Metalrocks

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Rainbow_Dashtruction said:
Eh, Papers Please was an alright game, but it showed that gamers will jump on anything 'innovative' regardless if its actually very entertaining. It wasn't a bad game per sae, but hardly amazing.

However this game idea sounds interesting. An FPS adventure game with a psuedo 1 bit art style? Interesting.
my thoughts as well. i havent finished it yet and probably never will.

his new game, well, maybe i see first how it is.
 

StriderShinryu

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Dec 8, 2009
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The setting and concept sound very interesting. I'll have to know more about what the game actually plays like once it's nearing completion but it definitely has my interest piqued.
 

mindfaQ

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Chaosian said:
I don't want to be an asshole, but wouldn't a 1 bit graphics system be simply white or black? There's clearly some greys there...
Perhaps it sounded better than 2 bit though.
Browser is resizing it to fit the article, that's why there are greys. If you watch the gif at 100%, it will be black and white only. (http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/737/737515.gif)
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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I've been one of the naysayers for a while now, and shall continue to be: Papers, Please! was not a good game. At all.

That said, a first-person mystery sounds like it could be fun...
 

Erttheking

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Rainbow_Dashtruction said:
Eh, Papers Please was an alright game, but it showed that gamers will jump on anything 'innovative' regardless if its actually very entertaining.
You know, just because you didn't enjoy it doesn't mean other people didn't. Unless you're trying to say that the people who liked Papers Please said it was good despite the fact that they didn't enjoy it.
 

Someone Depressing

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Jan 16, 2011
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Suprisingly, Pope here is one of the few "pretentious hipsters" who hasn't already been shot down and stopped in his tracks by Call of Duty players and GameFAQs forums.

It seems like, in the gaming community, something different = pretentious mess that nobody should care about.

Meh. Looks promising, like the aesthetic. Obviously looks hard to make.
 

Roxor

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Oooh. Nice. Reminds me of one of my EGA shaders I wrote for Media Player Classic.
 

alj

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Nov 20, 2009
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Oooo this should be interesting, and i will let one of the larin studio devs say it for me.