00:00I must find her.
00:03He's a lifeguard.
00:06Before he does.
00:11My name is Anders Haydenberg.
00:14I work as a creative director at River End Games.
00:17And we're currently working on our first game, Eric's Home, The Stolen Dream.
00:22Eric's Home is a game set in kind of a fantasy version of the early 1900s.
00:28And it has a kind of Scandinavian theme style to it.
00:33I would describe it as a stealth puzzle game with a very strong emphasis on story.
00:38Where you play up to three playable characters that you switch between.
00:42And they have their own special abilities that you need to use together to kind of solve situations and puzzles.
00:50In a kind of interlaced way where everyone's involved.
00:54You start the game playing as Hannah, who's the main character of the game.
00:57And she lives with her brother Herman in the Cutters Hill district of Eric's Home.
01:02Which is the poorest part of Eric's Home.
01:05And it used to be a really proud neighborhood of sailmakers and shipbuilders.
01:09But since the advent of steam power, it's kind of become this more downtrodden.
01:15And all the factories have moved and all of that.
01:17I think that we started with this game.
01:20We didn't start with the characters of the story.
01:23We started with the world.
01:24And once the world was taking shape, we started to create characters for it.
01:28Which we felt were interesting in some way.
01:31And then we picked the most interesting ones we'd come up with and wrote a story for them.
01:35And that way everything really ties together.
01:38But Hannah is very much someone who looks out for her brother.
01:41And she's very kind of honest and upfront of what everything she's doing.
01:47But that also gets her into a lot of trouble.
01:49Hannah, she is a feisty girl.
01:51She is a girl who knows what she wants.
01:53And she's not afraid to fight for it.
01:55She's not afraid to burn some bridges.
01:56Which is really cool.
01:57She's a very strong protagonist, to say the least.
02:00She is definitely the moral compass of everything that's going on in the game.
02:05I really love when games can throw you into the thing.
02:09Like you don't have to go through a lot of 10,000 years ago.
02:11This happened, you know.
02:13It's like you get this small cutscene.
02:15You understand where you are and what's going down.
02:18You're in action, right?
02:20I'm a big fan of stealth games.
02:22But I'm terrible at them.
02:23And one thing that I love the most is usually when I'm up on rooftops.
02:28kind of strategizing my next move.
02:30But once I get into it, I lose track of where everyone is.
02:35And I fumble and I feel incompetent.
02:37But sometimes those games deliver an experience where everything just fits perfectly.
02:43You execute the perfect plan and it all turns out nicely.
02:46So with Ericsome, I wanted to create a scenario or a gameplay where that's always possible.
02:51And the top-down camera allows you to be on the rooftops at all times
02:56and see everything that goes on and then figure out, based on what you see available to you,
03:02what character should I use and when and how to reach the results I want to reach here
03:07and then execute it perfectly like a heist.
03:10The further we get, you get a little bit more control of some other characters as well
03:15and they have different sort of ways of interacting with the world.
03:18In the get-go, you're just Hannah, you're just trying to sneak around, avoiding being seen, basically.
03:24In some parts, using your environment to distract or pull focus.
03:28There's a couple of places where you alert some birds, which then alerts a guard to that location,
03:34which makes you able to move around.
03:37It starts out small and simple, but then grows in complexity as the different characters come in
03:43and also based on the context of the situation and a lot of things like that.
03:48It's in this setting of a Scandinavian nature, which not only resonates with me,
04:03but with the rest of the world, because it's so unique.
04:05We've all seen these Victorian age games come in, we've seen Dishonored,
04:09and we've seen a lot of different games that's kind of done this before,
04:12but never in a Scandinavian setting.
04:13It's always nice to see something new that people can relate to.
04:18With writing, you usually say, write what you know, and for visual style,
04:24I think Paris and London and Vienna are beautiful cities, but we don't live in them.
04:30And having the inspirations and references right outside our door,
04:35it makes it a whole lot easier for us.
04:37And there's also the stories behind all of it that's so much more accessible
04:42if it's part of your language and your culture already.
04:46And there are so many stories from real life that have inspired the game
04:50and the visual aesthetic of it as well.
04:53I think that those small touches are so important in building something
04:57that just fits together in a way that's credible and believable.
05:01So I've worked a lot with lighting and 3D rendering, cinematic lighting, stuff like that.
05:05So Ander showed me the rendering of one of the movies and just floored me.
05:09I thought it was so beautiful.
05:10Then he said, okay, so Tio, what I want from you is I want you to make this look even better.
05:14What really sparked my interest in the game was that as a player,
05:17I've always been playing games with great cinematics.
05:20So this game really sparked my interest because I saw that there was a story
05:23and these small movie cutscenes in between that really felt genuine.
05:27The motion capture in our cinematics is amazing
05:31because we have great actors and we've had great technicians.
05:34We've had great animators who've been working on cleaning up that data.
05:37And then also the motion capture we have for the animation in the game
05:42is also really impressive.
05:43Like our in-game cutscenes are literally my colleague Lucas walking around in this room
05:49with his mocap suit, like reenacting a lot of the conversations,
05:53stitching it all together.
05:54It's, you will not find like these repetitive, simple little loops of talk animations, you know?
05:59It doesn't exist.
06:00There's so much unique content.
06:02It's, I think that is one of our biggest strengths.
06:05Since the camera is very far from the player,
06:07in order to feel the characters and feel the story,
06:10we wanted to have these close-up cinematics.
06:12And a big part of that is having a proper nice clothing and nice characters.
06:16Fairly early on, we settled on using scans.
06:19First, we worked with the concept artist who developed the first sketches.
06:24And then we talked with some costume designers
06:26and asked what the cost would be to create the clothing
06:30and sew the dresses from our concepts.
06:33But it was going to be way too expensive.
06:36And then we got an opportunity to work with a school
06:38that was looking for like a last year thesis
06:41to do.
06:42So we got an opportunity to work with them.
06:44We delivered concepts for the students
06:47and they had a couple of weeks to develop the clothing.
06:51Again, we looked at a lot of references
06:53from different military throughout the 1800s and 1900s.
06:57We also scanned boots
06:59that we found in vintage stores.
07:02They look great.
07:03One scanned.
07:04That's actually why I'm here.
07:05I respected your decision because I thought you respected me
07:08and my business and everything I've done for you,
07:10especially after your mum died.
07:12I do.
07:12Of course I do.
07:13But this isn't about me.
07:14Oh, it's always about you, Hannah.
07:16And now you've brought the police here.
07:17They're looking for Herman.
07:18We play tested the game a lot
07:22and what people usually say
07:24is that it feels like I'm playing a movie,
07:28but in a great way.
07:30River and Games was based on the idea
07:34that if you have the right mix of people,
07:37then perhaps a really small team
07:40can still make something that's actually pretty cool.
07:43How is this made by 16 people?
07:46Like, why is this quality so high?
07:49A little now and then,
07:50I sit down in the couch
07:51and I just enjoy a fresh build
07:54and I play and it all comes together.
07:56The story just gets to perform.
07:59You're just drawn right in.
08:00It's a magical feeling
08:01and I'm for sure the players are going to love that.
08:05That's going to be cool.
08:06I'm really excited for players
08:09to just discover this world.
08:11Eric's Home is coming to Xbox, PlayStation, Steam
08:15and Epic Games Store.
08:17So, wishlist it now.
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