I'm Jamar, one of the producers on the Twilight Zone game. Thanks everyone for your excitement about the upcoming game. We're still very early on but I wanted to pop in and respond to some of your great comments. If you have any questions or comments about the game then go ahead and post it here and I'll respond. Oh, you can also read updates (and my occasional musing) at the official blog.
"As I said on the website, it's good to see a new Twilight Zone game, but I question the choice of putting it on PC. It's not as popular as it once was for gaming and more often that not you need a brand spanking new one just to be able to run it.
Depending on the spec, I may not be able to run it on my laptop!"
Since my home personal computer was built in 2002 and can't play most games anymore I understand the fear. But the game is being built to run on as many computers as possible. While we're trying to get the best art style as possible we definitely won't be pushing processing speed or any super fancy lighting effects. If you're PC or Mac was bought in the last 10 or so years you should be fine.
And actually the PC and Mac has seen a huge resurgence in casual gaming. Genres that were considered niche before, like point and click adventures, are very popular again. A large part of the resurgence has been games catering more to the average person and not just the super gamer. To me the really cool and innovative games are coming out on the computer and tablets, not the consoles.
"Oddly enough, I think that is how the game will work for the best - a point and click adventure. Being the type of series The Twilight Zone is, no other genre of game would fit the mould."
Exactly why we're making the game a light adventure. We actually tried to think of other game genres and none of them felt quite right (though check out the Twilight Zone pinball game, it's really good). Light Adventure works well because it really allows us to focus on story as well as gameplay.
"I wouldn't mind it being that as long as it made references to the series in some way. It would be great to visit locations from famous episodes and solve puzzles there, rather than have some generic puzzles while the Twilight Zone theme plays every now and then.
Still, I remain hopeful."
Not divulging too much into our internal conversations, but this touches on one of the struggles we've been working on. We want the game to reference the Twilight Zone as much as possible. However, early on we made the decision to go with original stories instead of retelling the classic episodes. The reason why was because if we took a great episode, like Eye of the Beholder, and tried to make it a game then we would automatically tell a weaker story than the original. Eye of the Beholder was written specifically for the television and would have to be distorted to work as a game story. So we're creating stories made specifically to be told through the game medium. We think that'll make the game feel much more immersive and natural. So we're still looking for nods to the fans but not to the point where it takes away from the story.
"Perhaps a Silent Hill-esque game could work. Walking through the various sets and locations as well as interacting with characters in a spooky atmosphere could be excellent.
Going out on a whim here, but an awesome story for the game would be to take it post-modern. Open with a guy falling asleep on a couch watching the Twilight Zone then BOOM, he's zapped into the TV and he's now walking through the fifth dimension.
Just spitballing ideas!"
...have you been in our meetings? I won't tell you exactly how close you are but you're hitting the general idea.
"Well that has me excited. It looks like it's staying faithful to the look of the original series. They say it'll be in colour by the time the game's released... call me crazy but I hope it stays the way it is. It'll give the game a great art style and make it feel more like an old Twilight Zone episode."
We know we don't want to make the whole game b&w (there's legitimate game design concerns) but we do like the black and white aesthetic. We're still trying to implement b&w wherever possible.
