Crooked Bee
(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iqioi/blackmore-a-steampunk-adventure-game
Blackmore is a point-and-click/menu adventure game set in steampunk London. It looks pretty interesting, but I'm not backing it just yet because they don't even seem to have any in-game screens or gameplay videos. Still, it's something to maybe keep an eye on.
It also features a high-tech monocle as one of the player character's gadgets.
The Team
Jeremy Blaustein (Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill), a master storyteller, an ace at writing great dialog and a voice director that brings out the best from actors, will lead the team. Satoshi Yoshioka (Snatcher, Policenauts), with his distinctive and immediately recognizable awesome Japanese style will be spearheading the character design and Motoaki Furukawa (Gradius, Snatcher), one of the game industry's most experienced game music composers will handle the original music to further enhance the strong Japanese aesthetics.
Platforms: Blackmore will be developed first for PC and Mac and will be made available on Steam and other DRM-free digital download distribution methods. Home consoles are also a high priority, but only if we can afford them via stretch goals.
Blackmore is a steampunk-themed adventure game set in an alternate universe of Victorian era London in 1888.
Imagine an alternative London in the Victorian Era - a world where European and Asian fashion and aesthetics collide, a world where advances in automation, electronics and chemistry have ushered in a wondrous new world filled with robotic servants, steam-driven transportation and ornately gilded steampunk gadgetry. But as wondrous as it may appear, all that gleaming steel and burnished brass hides an underbelly tainted by rust and tarnished with grime. It's a world where homeless children beg for food, their hands yellowed and stained from toiling in the match factory, a world where families sleep crowded together in rat-infested rooms, a world choking to death on its own gluttonous greed.
Gameplay
I'm guessing most of you are familiar with the style of gameplay in adventure games, but let me take a moment to describe it for those of you who are not. In Blackmore, the main character, Emma, along with Descartes, will be moving from area to area searching for clues, asking questions and solving puzzles via a mouse-click menu system. All of this will be presented within a gorgeously drawn isometric 2.5D environment.
Whether or not you advance in the game will depend on how quickly you can pick up on the various clues and on how well you employ the tools at your disposal. Emma, being not only a trained doctor but also the daughter of a noted inventor, has a number of tools and gadgets at her disposal. The most sophisticated of these is a high-tech monocle equipped with a variety of technologies including the ability to take photographs. It also gives her the ability to use other forensic techniques that can reveal things not at first visible to the naked eye.
Incidentally, all the photos you take will be, of course, hand-drawn closeups of objects or characters seen from Emma's perspective and will be stored in the game's memory and made available for viewing anytime. Emma will be assisted by her mechanical companion, Descartes, who can perform various tasks suitable to a robotic sidekick of his diminutive proportions. Think of him as a combination guide, partner, comic relief and multi-tool.
Blackmore features:
Blackmore is a point-and-click/menu adventure game set in steampunk London. It looks pretty interesting, but I'm not backing it just yet because they don't even seem to have any in-game screens or gameplay videos. Still, it's something to maybe keep an eye on.
It also features a high-tech monocle as one of the player character's gadgets.
The Team
Jeremy Blaustein (Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill), a master storyteller, an ace at writing great dialog and a voice director that brings out the best from actors, will lead the team. Satoshi Yoshioka (Snatcher, Policenauts), with his distinctive and immediately recognizable awesome Japanese style will be spearheading the character design and Motoaki Furukawa (Gradius, Snatcher), one of the game industry's most experienced game music composers will handle the original music to further enhance the strong Japanese aesthetics.
Platforms: Blackmore will be developed first for PC and Mac and will be made available on Steam and other DRM-free digital download distribution methods. Home consoles are also a high priority, but only if we can afford them via stretch goals.
Blackmore is a steampunk-themed adventure game set in an alternate universe of Victorian era London in 1888.
Imagine an alternative London in the Victorian Era - a world where European and Asian fashion and aesthetics collide, a world where advances in automation, electronics and chemistry have ushered in a wondrous new world filled with robotic servants, steam-driven transportation and ornately gilded steampunk gadgetry. But as wondrous as it may appear, all that gleaming steel and burnished brass hides an underbelly tainted by rust and tarnished with grime. It's a world where homeless children beg for food, their hands yellowed and stained from toiling in the match factory, a world where families sleep crowded together in rat-infested rooms, a world choking to death on its own gluttonous greed.
Gameplay
I'm guessing most of you are familiar with the style of gameplay in adventure games, but let me take a moment to describe it for those of you who are not. In Blackmore, the main character, Emma, along with Descartes, will be moving from area to area searching for clues, asking questions and solving puzzles via a mouse-click menu system. All of this will be presented within a gorgeously drawn isometric 2.5D environment.
Whether or not you advance in the game will depend on how quickly you can pick up on the various clues and on how well you employ the tools at your disposal. Emma, being not only a trained doctor but also the daughter of a noted inventor, has a number of tools and gadgets at her disposal. The most sophisticated of these is a high-tech monocle equipped with a variety of technologies including the ability to take photographs. It also gives her the ability to use other forensic techniques that can reveal things not at first visible to the naked eye.
Incidentally, all the photos you take will be, of course, hand-drawn closeups of objects or characters seen from Emma's perspective and will be stored in the game's memory and made available for viewing anytime. Emma will be assisted by her mechanical companion, Descartes, who can perform various tasks suitable to a robotic sidekick of his diminutive proportions. Think of him as a combination guide, partner, comic relief and multi-tool.
Blackmore features:
- Highly detailed rendered 2.5D isometric graphics
- Classic point and click/menu mechanics
- A powerful orchestral soundtrack written and performed by Motoaki Furukawa, a Konami musical legend
- Classic Japanese art-style drawn by veteran Konami artist, Satoshi Yoshioka, who has worked on such hits as Snatcher and Policenauts
- A compelling story and script written by Jeremy Blaustein, the man behind the English Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid, the Silent Hill series, Shadow Hearts, Suikoden 2 and many more.
- Top voice actors such as David Hayter, Jeff Lupetin and others directed by Jeremy Blaustein