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Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Cube

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Cube Collaborator

Cube

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Hi there, we’re Dan and Jessica, Co-Directors of The Chinese Room. We’re based in Brighton, on the south coast of the UK. We made a game called Dear Esther for PC last year that was a first-person story-driven exploration and mystery title. It was all about immersion and emotion, rather than having lots of complex gameplay, and was slow and poetic, with a really strong emphasis on the quality of the production – music, art, writing, voice-over.

 

It was one of the breakout indie hits of 2012, gathering up a whole bag of international awards and shifting over three quarters of a million copies. We were left thinking “how do you follow that?”

 

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, our new game, is our attempt to answer that question, and I want to tell you a little about it.

 

Like Dear Esther, the new game is all about the story. It uses simple gameplay – basic exploration of a first-person world – so it’s very friendly to people without a lot of game experience. But it’s not casual in the classic sense – this is a deep and immersive game.

 

It’s all about the end of the world. You play the role of a scientist, trapped in the very second of the apocalypse, and the game is about discovering what has happened. You do this by exploring a large open-world environment, and interacting with the objects, places and people you find to gradually unlock and put together the story.

 

There’s also a really cool thing you can do which makes the game really different and makes this process of exploring the story something you could only do in a game, but we’re keeping that secret for now. Expect a reveal about that in due course, but we’re very excited about it and can’t wait to show it off.

 

When we started making Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, we knew we wanted to make a console title. We also knew that Sony were committed to pushing really interesting indie and experimental work, and figured they’d be into the ideas we were putting together. In a completely idealistic and high risk move, we forgot about the idea of a Plan B, put together a prototype and approached Sony Santa Monica. They were just shipping Journey and Unfinished Swan and we thought we’d have a lot in common in terms of ideas about story, gameplay, player experience.

 

So what can you expect? Well, we can promise you that Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will be powerful and deep, highly immersive and with an absolute focus on your emotional journey through the world. It’s non-linear, with a dynamic and adaptive environment, so this is about your story, a really individual experience that breaks away from the on-rails nature of lots of story-driven games into something that you have a visible impact on.

 

We’ve got a brilliant team of developers here, most of whom have come straight from AAA production and have worked on some of the best games to come out of the UK in recent years. As studio heads, it’s inspiring to look at the talent and experience on the team and more than anything, it makes us confident we’re making a really great game for you.

 

We’ll be introducing them over on the studio blog at http://www.thechineseroom.co.uk/blog over the next few weeks as we really kick into full production, and sharing more information about the game with you here as things develop. For now, we just want to say “hello” and let you know how unbelievably excited we are to be here, making this thing for you. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

 

In short: Developers of Dear Esther are making a new story-driven game for PS4.

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S.C.G Collaborator

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BioShock associations I reckon.

 

But even with the title as it is, I'd still associate it with BioShock anyway, just that if it was a one word title it'd seem more saleable, as it is I think it sounds too literal... it's immediately off-putting to me though perhaps it won't matter to most people. ::shrug:

 

Anyway, it's just an observation. :)

 

This isn't what I'm buying a PS4 for in any case so it doesn't bother me that much. : peace:

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Ashley Collaborator

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The whole time the trailer was playing, all I could think was...

 

'Why didn't they just call it 'Rapture'? '

 

Looks ok though I suppose.

 

'Rapture' is generic and has a lot of associations (the aforementioned Bioshock, the band 'The Rapture', its the name of a novel, several songs and albums and even the codename for Final Fantasy XIV).

 

This stands out a bit more, and there's something perversely jovial about it as if everyone chose to go to the rapture because it is a fun place to be.

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S.C.G Collaborator

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Yes, I get that's what they are going for but still, I can't help but think they might be doing themselves out of sales by having a rather long title...

 

Out of interest, how did 'Dear Esther' do sales-wise? As that's a title which is quite simple but clearly not mainstream; which is a good thing.

 

I respect the developer's choice to go for a name that's very unusual rather than something simpler, but I just can't see something like this being talked about much outside of forums... perhaps that's what they are aiming for though, just to create a game that only resonates with long-term gamers?

 

Now even I'm not sure. :heh:

 

Oh well, it has potential regardless of name but I definitely need to see more on this title before I completely make my mind up. : peace:

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Hero-of-Time Experienced

Hero-of-Time

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We’re a couple of weeks out from Beta for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture on PS4, which is incredibly exciting and quite scary in equal measure. There’s always a point in every game development where you start counting down the days and hours, and everything gears itself around the question of “right, we’re shipping this thing, are we ready?”

 

Everyone’s time is split between chewing through bugs and carving out time for as much polish and finesse as we can. There’s always something that can be improved. Late tweaks to design, signposting, player flow, discovery — this is all still happening. Rotating a prop by a few degrees can make a dramatic difference to how you navigate a space, or the likelihood of encouraging an area to be explored in more detail. Small adjustments to things like audio volume, or the area boundaries of ambient or procedural sound, can have an impact on the emotional tone of a space or moment, which has a knock-on effect to things like pacing or the interpretation of a story beat.

 

There’s some big, exciting changes too. This month Jessica (our talented studio head and composer) went to Air Studios to work with a world class team of musicians and engineers and came out with a soundtrack that is going to be one of the highlights of game music this year (actually, I think it’s better than that, it’s one of the best game soundtracks ever created). We’ve spent a fantastic week implementing it into the world and it’s transforming the experience, adding a huge jolt of warmth, depth, and humanity. These are the most rewarding moments in development, where the game leaps forwards and just transforms around you. It’s really exciting and makes all of the grunt work worthwhile.

 

Everybody's Gone to the RaptureEverybody's Gone to the Rapture

So the end is in sight. We’re going to announce a launch date shortly, so stay tuned for that. I’m so proud of the team and the game we’ve made. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is going to be really different, an apocalypse like no other, and we think it’s going to be good.

 

To give you an updated look at the game, there is a new trailer above, which is focused a bit more on the tone and story of the game — we’ve got a lot of beautiful world to show you, but we wanted to go small and intimate with this one, be a bit different with it.

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S.C.G Collaborator

S.C.G

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Being that it's digital only, I'm going to wait and at least see what others think about it first, it'll be a Plus title eventually... which I know isn't really the best way to look at it but with everything else I have on my backlog it would be pointless me buying this right away.

 

Now that I've read a bit more about the game, understand the reasoning behind the name a bit more and admittedly drooled over the visuals while being intrigued by the story; I'm certainly interested. :)

 

It might not be a game that I originally bought the PS4 for but after having one for a while, the steady flow of retail titles plus downloadable experiences such as this definitely make me glad to have purchased one. : peace:

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Fierce_LiNk Newbie

Fierce_LiNk

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Being that it's digital only, I'm going to wait and at least see what others think about it first, it'll be a Plus title eventually... which I know isn't really the best way to look at it but with everything else I have on my backlog it would be pointless me buying this right away.

 

Now that I've read a bit more about the game, understand the reasoning behind the name a bit more and admittedly drooled over the visuals while being intrigued by the story; I'm certainly interested. :)

 

It might not be a game that I originally bought the PS4 for but after having one for a while, the steady flow of retail titles plus downloadable experiences such as this definitely make me glad to have purchased one. : peace:

 

I can't see this being on Plus any time soon. We're talking at least a year down the line, imo.

 

I've been following this for some time and think it looks and sounds stunning. Given that I've had tons of games to play through plus (and probably saved a fair bit of money along the way), I don't mind too much about paying full price for this.

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Ganepark32 Newbie

Ganepark32

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Picking it up myself tomorrow evening. Looks interesting and visually impressive so hoping for at least a good story from it to match my intrigue. Might be awhile before I get to it though as I've still got The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to finish up, episode 4 of Life is Strange and a bunch of other things to play through but I'll see if I can make some time for it in amongst that over the next couple of days.

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Hero-of-Time Experienced

Hero-of-Time

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Downloading now, but, seeing as how slow my Internet connection is the rapture probably will have already happened by the time it's finished.

 

When you bought it did the 20% PS+ discount show up? I checked before going to work and the discount hadn't been activated yet. It was still showing as £15.99.

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