Papers Please was a surprising hit of 2013, with incredibly minimalist graphics and essentially, gameplay. It somehow managed to not only give gamers an experience that was tense, difficult and at times emotionally heart rending, without HD visuals or fancy controller schemes. In the developer, Lucas Pope's, next game, he's looking to make something similar, but with a 1bit Mac aesthetic.
"My first computer was a Mac Plus. I've always had a nostalgia-softened spot in my heart for 1-bit graphics. I'd like to capture the detailed black & white look of old Mac games in a realtime 1st person game," Pope said in a forum post.
He also released the screenshot in the gallery of a title screen, naming the game as "Return of Obra Dinn."
It's all still early days at the moment, so not much has been made of the game, but Pope has said he wants to challenge himself in its creation and make something unlike anything he's made before. Gameplay he says, won't be as "creative" as it was in Papers Please, but instead he wants to try and push a new graphical aesthetic and focus on experimenting with story a bit more.
With regards to that however, we do have at least some insight:
"In 1802, the merchant ship "Obra Dinn" set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea. Early this morning of October 14th, 1808, the Obra Dinn drifted into port with sails damaged and no visible crew. As insurance adjustor for the East India Company's London Office, find means to board the ship and recover the captain's logbook for assessment."
Chances are, we're looking at a bit of a dungeon crawler within the bowels of a ship.
What do you guys think of the look of this game? Did you like Papers Please?
