Dec 19, 2012 by TeeGee

Solstice is coming!

When I look outside my window, all I can see is snow, snow, and more snow. Well, it’s Poland in winter.

 

It seems like the perfect setting for the announcement of our next game — Solstice. A fantasy mystery with no right answers, set in an exotic city in the midst of a frozen desert.

 

Solstice

 

Solstice is an original story by Hubert and Agnieszka — the writers who joined us during Cinders development. There’s crime, there’s mystery, and there are two player characters trying to figure it all out. The game moves away from trying to find a singular solution to the mystery, and instead focuses on learning all its whereabouts and underlaying motivations of the characters involved. It’s going to be all about the secrets.

 

You can learn more about Solstice’s story on its dedicated subpage.

 

We also aim to top the production values of Cinders with this game. No sense in doing anything if you are not making progress, right? The presentation is going to be more dynamic, with animated characters, special effects, etc.

 

I’m going to publish a short video showcasing the new features shortly after the Holidays are over, so keep your eyes peeled.

News | 7 Comments

  1. ANtY wrote a comment on: December 19, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    can’t wait!

  2. Ren wrote a comment on: December 21, 2012 at 12:07 am

    Sounds like an interesting premise, I’ll be most curious to see how the execution is (since this is going to be hopefully all written by Hubert and Agnieszka).
     
    I like that it’s going to be a mystery and a story about secrets rather than necessarily a genre more common to visual novels like dating or raising sims could be.

  3. TeeGee wrote a comment on: December 21, 2012 at 12:34 am

    Yes, Hubert and Agnieszka are doing all the writing this time. It’s their original story. Which also gives me more time to work on cool effects and such ;) .
     
    Glad you like the premise and that it’s not using a more established VN cliches. We too are of the opinion that the genre could use more fresh ideas.

  4. Red wrote a comment on: December 23, 2012 at 1:37 am

    Is the art gonna be by Gracjana?

  5. TeeGee wrote a comment on: December 23, 2012 at 10:33 am

    Yes. Same team all around :) .

  6. Ren wrote a comment on: January 2, 2013 at 1:32 am

    Another curiosity, I hope you don’t mind: have you considered at all to have tablet versions of this kind of game at all?

    I know other developers seem to think that it’s not worth it, but I think that it would be quite nice to have a port for that kind of platform. Personally, I don’t play this kind of game almost at all because I spend so much time at work, and I’d find it much easier to have something that I can bring with me rather than having to wait the evening to play just a bit.

    I think part of the reason why other VNs don’t sell so much is because:

    - They target a younger audience that doesn’t necessarily possess such devices;
    - They publish stripped-down versions of their VNs (taking some functionality out);
    - They don’t necessarily optimise these VNs for the devices so buying the computer version or just not buying them is a better option.

    Mind, I am biased towards my particular experience, but I always got the impression your audience would necessarily be a bit older/mature due to the themes you choose, the writing style you employ and the graphic style you use. Would it be a huge investment of time compared to the possible returns? Someone once told me they’d expect it would take a competent programmer something like a week to make a proof of concept for Android devices to see how viable it would be to do a complete one and to get an idea of how much it would take to complete it and how well the features could be implemented.

  7. TeeGee wrote a comment on: January 2, 2013 at 11:06 am

    We do plan to release our games on iOS and Android eventually. GameMaker is actually multi-platform, so it would take us around a month per game to make a quality port. It’s just not very high on our priority list. Because of how the mobile market looks like these days, we don’t project too many sales. It’s essentially a casual portal where only the super-popular games (free-to-play-but-not-really or costing $1) get to the top, while all the rest, especially niche and more expensive titles, are buried fast.
     
    So we’re kinda curious to see how it goes, but it’s not worth it for just a single game. We plan to start working on the ports after Solstice is out.