As early as the beginning of the release of the trailer in the summer of 2021, “The Dark World: Cause and Effect” (hereinafter referred to as “Cause and Fruit”) has attracted the attention of many players with its terrifying and depressing grotesque art style and “subtle” gameplay. appetite.
On December 18, “Cause and Fruit” finally made its offline debut, which is a small warm-up before the game’s official release in 2023, allowing some players to get a glimpse of the true content of “Cause and Fruit”.
In the game, the player will play the role of Daniel, an agent of the mysterious organization “Leviathan Bureau of Thought”, sneak into other people’s brains through brain-computer devices, retrieve lost memories, and fulfill his mission
We also participated in this small local offline event in Shanghai, got started with the game demo that took about 25 minutes, and also chatted with the production team about the inspiration of the game setting and the tidbits during the development process after the demo.
Event hosted with support from publishing partner Gamera Game
1. “Is the bad one the world or yourself”
Cause and Effect is downright dystopian, and the development team never tried to hide it. “Bureau of Thought” can remind people of George Orwell’s handed down work “1984” at the first time; Important work on formation and theory of human nature.
The person in charge Wang Yonghe said frankly that “1984” is one of the prototypes of the world view that “Cause and Effect” draws on. In the game, the telescreen used by Leviathan Company to report work is inspired by the big brother who monitors every move of the people in “1984” .
TV elements are ubiquitous in the game
The world in the game has overlapped with the real world for quite a long time, but at some point after World War II, it moved to a different world line. In the world of “Cause and Effect”, a technology company called Leviathan Group tries to help rebuild the once war-torn city and bring peace and progress to the people.
It did help the city rise into a modern metropolis, but people also felt a little strange: whether it was the telescreen used to announce work or the ideological bureau to maintain social stability, Leviathan’s infiltration was everywhere.
This kind of setting that is not completely overhead creates a subtle sense of oppression brought by reality: many scenes in the game, such as the household appliances inside the house, restore the furnishings in the middle of the last century, but the details are different. Slightly different.
For example, in the real world, people in the 1960s and 1970s used letters to transfer files from company to company, but in the game world, they used pneumatic tubes with a more centralized sense of control.
As an investigator of the Thought Bureau, the protagonist’s job is to maintain social order just like the police in the real world, but the means of maintenance are different. In the world of “Cause and Effect”, there is no interrogation, because investigators can directly enter the suspect’s brain through a mysterious device similar to a brain computer, and directly face the memory of the suspect at the time of the crime.
This is also the core gameplay of the game: as a “roamer” (called “ROAM agent” in the game), the player does not simply travel to the memory of the infiltrated object, but also feels the other person’s thoughts at the time. Find out what the other party did in this memory in the inner world of the brain, so as to restore the truth of the incident.
On-site players are using colorful equipment to try out
For example, if the protagonist needs to enter a door when acting as a suspect, but the suspect has never opened that door in his memory, then this space is missing in the suspect’s memory; if the suspect is doing something When you think of your family and children, or bullying your colleagues, the corresponding part of the space is also chaotic, and the emotions of sneaking into the object will make the space produce bizarre changes. This is also the art style of the game combining weirdness and realism source.
This kind of inhuman sneaking behavior can easily make players doubt: Am I doing these things really right? Has the company Leviathan really made the city better? The tech company is bringing about change without any human factor in mind. The Leviathan Group only pursues the ideal level of urban construction, and doesn’t care what happens to the humans who live in it.
Producer Wang Yonghyuk shared with the players
When asked about the background of the game, Wang Yonghe specifically mentioned that “Cause and Effect” draws on the anti-utopian setting of “BioShock” and “Half-Life” and other predecessor works to deal with high-handed rule and the so-called “collective organization takeover”. The imagination of social forms, and concretize this imagination into a question: Will a company with highly advanced technology bring about a better world? However, unlike many previous works that focus on totalitarianism, the final foothold of “Cause and Effect” is still a personal story. After all, after putting aside all kinds of external restrictions, how to look at the world around you is still determined by your personal perspective. “At the beginning you may think that this world is terrible, but when you look back, is it the world that is terrible, or yourself?” The production team hopes that at the end of playing this game, players can think about themselves As a viewer and operator, the relationship between the characters they control. Maybe everyone is a bad guy before sneaking into the suspect’s memory; but once you learn more about the characters you control, maybe every character has a heart-wrenching moment.
All of the above are just the information that can be revealed in the game trial chapter, and more content will be revealed after the official release.
2. “Money should be spent wisely”
Returning to the game development process, Wang Yonghyuk said that the overseas experience of the core team had a great influence on the game design. Wang Yonghyuk has more than ten years of experience in game development, and has participated in the production of 3A masterpieces such as “Uncharted 4”. The members of Moon Soil Studio have also participated in the development of well-known 3A games. At the beginning of the game project, the team hoped to make a walking simulator with the characteristics of domestic games.
Walking simulators seem to be a very popular category, but they are not very common among domestic developers because (in Wang Yonghe’s words) “do not make money”. For overseas developers, walking simulators are products that almost every indie gamer will start with, such as “Layers of Fear” and “What Remains of Edith Finch”. Correspondingly, Moon Soil Studio, which has overseas experience, is also relatively familiar with the development of walking simulators, and has more space to explore unique visual experiences and world views.
Even if it cannot be completely different from similar games on the market, Moon Soil also hopes that “Cause and Fruit” can be unique with its own core content.
Moon Soil’s pursuit of a unique creative process has not been smooth sailing. Especially when it comes to visual creation, many of the results of the team’s hard work may be the directions that have been explored by the predecessors. “Often people will leave a seed after seeing something, and then extend from this seed. But when you work hard to extend it, you find that many people have actually extended more things from this seed.” Wang Yonghe smiled wryly. road.
Ultimately, the production team adopted an emotion-driven approach to development. At the beginning of the production of each level, the team will design the corresponding emotional experience line, similar to the three-stage structure of “bedding-conflict-climax” when writing a movie script. For players, each chapter is a big three-paragraph, and a specific content in a chapter is a small three-paragraph.
Of course, game development is not a formula. Wang Yonghyuk said that the game content does not strictly follow the three-stage process. What I experienced most deeply during the trial play was the exquisitely arranged jump scare. The so-called small scares are pleasant, and big scares hurt the body. The number of jump scares in “Cause and Fruit” is not small, and sometimes it is even the climax of the entire content, but the rhythm is controlled just right, and there is enough space between each other for the players. Think playful space.
What also impressed me deeply was the soundtrack and sound effects of the game. Cause and Effect offers an immersive audio experience rarely seen in walking simulators. After entering the office for the first time in the game and putting the broken TV on the pile of TVs, the whole office was surrounded by strange noises: the dog started to shake his head, the keyboard crackled, and the printer swallowed paper. It was so lively.
When producing the sound effects of this section, the music team set up independent sound units for each keyboard, and added sound effects for the paper entering and exiting the printer. Even the space where the dog shakes his head and flicks his tongue is constantly moving, which makes people feel a little creepy.
Such an immersive sound experience is largely due to the new Dolby Atmos technology and Wwise sound engine, which can better create a layered auditory environment for players. Dolby itself can realize the rebound effect of spatial sound quality on different materials, and Wwise can help developers simulate the reflectance and real sound of each space.
The official homepage of Dolby Games released a report on “Cause and Effect” earlier this year. This is also the first time that Dolby has released information related to domestic independent games.
Reagan Li, the music director of “Cause and Effect”, graduated from the famous Berklee College of Music, and has many talents in composition, singing and conducting. Knowing that the budget of the studio is not too much, Reagan used his own relationship to invite the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, which has participated in the live recording of works such as “The Wandering Earth” and “Parasite”, to be responsible for the theme song of “Cause and Effect”. Really small cost, big production.
Although Wang Yonghyuk has been emphasizing that the production team is very frugal during the interview, but judging from the quality of the demo, there is no trace of saving money at all. “We don’t want to save money until the end of the game to leave the impression of ‘you are too cheap’. Instead, we hope that players will look back and think ‘how did they save money to save money’ without knowing our budget? something made'”.
3. “A game made by a group of movie fans”
Be it the stunning art style or the immersive listening experience, in Wang Yonghyuk’s opinion, what impresses me the most about “Cause and Effect” is the story itself told by the game.
Almost everyone in Moon Soil Studio is a pure movie lover. When they were not very busy before, they held a movie viewing meeting every Friday, prepared delicious food and drinks, and found rare film sources to watch and discuss together.
What the highly aesthetic team of viewers brings is tolerance and support for the absurd and bizarre artistic ideas. “When I said that there was a flower growing on the top of the person’s head, and that there was a small TV growing inside the person’s head, there was a picture in everyone’s mind. When I said this idea, everyone would not I find it strange.” What pleased Wang Yonghe the most was that everyone in the team recognized the story content and final presentation of “Cause and Effect”.
Not just talking about it, the artist really made “a small TV grow in his head” in the game
This is not a self-proclaimed product of the producer. There are many expressive people in the “Cause and Effect” team. They hope to tell stories through the game and let others hear their voices. Whether it is an event plot or a level design, everyone will actively discuss and express their opinions, so as to prevent the game from becoming a product of one party’s paranoid appeal. Even this offline demo meeting is because Yue Yang wants to hear players’ views on this kind of subject matter, and make further inclusive adjustments to the game.
After the trial, the players spontaneously discussed the content of the game
“Cause and Effect” is more like a temptation in the expression of Moon Soil. As a domestic developer, Moon Soil knows that there are many unparalleled stories in Chinese culture that are worth digging, but it is this kind of understanding rooted in blood that makes the studio feel a little burdened by being close to home. “I’ve always thought it was very, very hard to create a story about your own home, much harder than something ‘out there’.”
The collision of cultures and the combination of art require both parties to hone and learn together. Wang Yonghyuk used the famous martial arts star Bruce Lee to shoot a large number of movies in Hollywood in the early days to compare the creative attempts of Moon Soil in the early days: he wanted to find out the preferences of players in other parts of the world, and then explore how to convey things from “home” to “outside”. I hope to come back to pick up local themes and tell Chinese stories when I have the ability.
The game characters all use western faces and English dubbing, but there is no special emphasis on the concepts of space and time. Players may be able to find the corresponding real-world year when playing now, but they may return to another time and space in the next second. As for why the game is named “KARMA (Karma/Karma)”, Wang Yonghyuk said that it is necessary to combine all the stories to understand “the origin”.
The current plan of the production team is to complete the entire process and story of the game before the end of the year, and then gradually improve the animation scenes and character models.
Interview: River
Author: egg
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