Hi everyone, I wanted to open a discussion with you all about a game concept that’s been in my mind for a while now but it’s so ambitious that it’s kind of hard to risk spending time on this without knowing whether people are really interested in this sort of game. For those of you that have played our most recent adventure game “The Ghosts of Hackney Mills” you’ve probably realized that it has a far more open world structure than the games in the “Silver Creek Falls” series. I really wanted to experiment a little with the concept of a game where you have to work hard to put the clues together to solve the mystery and finish the game, however if you know what to do beforehand you can finish the game in ten minutes. In other words a game that doesn’t put artificial barriers behind solving the mystery, you don’t have to find all the necessary clues to solve it; you can find what you need by sheer luck as well. Kind of like the real world. Now I understand that “The Ghosts of Hackney Mills” turned out to not be quite as good as the “Silver Creek Falls” series games and for that reason we’re charging considerably less for it. It was a really big and bold idea I had at the time about making this type of “realistic open world” type game but it essentially got rushed because of our commitments to making “The Agency Chapter 2” within a certain deadline and at the end I understand why many players found “The Ghosts of Hackney Mills” lacking. Also it was the first time trying a lot of those new features and I definitely understand where it lacked polish. The question I’d like to submit for discussion is whether you players would enjoy a game like “The Ghosts of Hackney Mills” but done much better with much more polish but also much much harder and much bigger. A game where you really need to investigate a lot of, documents, audio files and leads to see what’s relevant and what isn’t. A game where pen and paper and hard deduction are necessary and also searching outside sources to verify facts. I’m thinking “Papers Please” meets “Her Story” meets “Everyone has gone to the rapture” meets “Silver Creek Falls”. In other words I really want to make a game that somewhat simulates the experience of being a detective within the confines of a 2D pixel style map. But I want to make a game that’s realistic and includes having to go through the documents you find to really analyse what’s wrong and what’s right. My concern is that this type of game might be considered boring for a wider audience but if we got enough people interested in this sort of thing then I do believe it would be a fun game to make and also a fun game to play, stream and upload on YouTube. My question is, would you be interested in a “hard” game where you really have to use your wits to solve the mystery and there is no one taking you by the hand? Antonio Lorenzo Carino – Creative Director Sapphire Dragon Productions