Cyberpunk Cityscapes For You, Cyberpunk: Epanalepsis
Point and click adventure already funded
Hello, Cameron Kunzelman. Nice to see you, to see you nice. Epanalepsis is a figure of speech as well as the name of an upcoming game by Kunzelman, who last featured on RPS with the release of Catachresis. The new game, already funded on Kickstarter, is a 'spiritual successor' to last year's short horror adventure, with a similar focus on exploration and narrative rather than puzzles and interaction. Like its predecessor, it won't appeal to the majority but it might well make a specific minority group very happy indeed. That group will contain Philip K Dick, Gibson and John Dos Passos readers.
The authors listed above are mentioned in a fine interview with Indiestatik. It also contains thoughts on the single location used in the game, which will be seen in three different time periods, "the 1990s, 2010s, and 2030s". Set part of your game in the 1990s and chances are I'll pick up on it eventually.
Here's a section from Indiestatik's interview.
The unity of location actually goes back to a project that I started working on and never quite got off the ground (I will get to it one day). I’m fascinated with Warren Spector’s idea of a “one city block RPG” (there’s a great Jim Rossignol article where he explores that concept). The basic idea is a very traditional JRPG that takes place in one apartment block and follows a few days in the life of an up-and-coming rapper.
In any case, I was working on that, and I hit a wall with it, but the idea of the single location that needs to be navigated stuck around. When I got to the point of thinking about another adventure game, the idea was still there, and I combined them.
And notice how I link to another website, which links back to RPS. Some sort of hyperlink Ouroboros.
Kunzelman has this to say:
Epanalepsis is a point and click adventure game with minimal puzzles and a heavy focus on narrative. It will use standard point and click mechanics and feature a significant number of objects to interact with and NPCs to talk to. Part of the draw of Epanalepsis is that this world is inhabited throughout the time periods that the game takes place in, and the player will have ample opportunity to speak to those inhabitants and see what their respective decades are like. In order to achieve this, the number of environments will be limited so that players can experience all of those environments during each of the three narratives.
He confirms that the game will contain no "moustaches made of cat hair".
Epanalepsis is already funded but stretch goals await, should you be interested in that sort of thing.