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| The Lost Legends of REDWALL: Escape the Gloomer |
Soma Games, in association with Redwall Abbey Company Ltd, and Penguin Random House UK, releases The Lost Legends of REDWALL: Escape the Gloomer, a conversational adventure game in nine chapters.
Escape the Gloomer, the second episode of The Lost Legends of REDWALL video game series, has been written and directed by video game designer and innovator Scott Adams.
The game features characters from the wildly popular best-selling book, Mossflower, second in the twenty-two book series by Brian Jacques.
"This interactive tale immerses the player in a fantasy world where their own imagination is what drives the outcomes," says Chris Skaggs, Game Director and Principal at Soma Games. "We're also very excited to have pioneering game developer Scott Adams and his team on board for this collaboration. Scott's been making games for over 40 years, and his is a name very familiar to many interactive game fans."
Inspired by the iconic mainframe game Adventure, Adams is perhaps most well known for creating Adventureland, the first ever commercial adventure game. Adams is also the creator of Pirate Island, and the Marvel Questprobe series: Spiderman, Hulk, and Fantastic Four.
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| The Gloomer |
"You will be living the life of a true explorer and adventurer when you enter into an immersive conversational adventure game world," says Adams. "Exploration, obstacles, dangers, along with laughter and suspense, will unfold within the rich tapestry of the world you find yourself in. With natural language sentences, you are in command; creating the story as the adventure unfolds."
"Jacques first wrote this book for the blind, and that was what inspired us to create a game that isn't visually based," says Adams, referring to the fact that author Brian Jacques wrote the book initially to entertain the children at Liverpool's Royal School for the Blind. "The popularity of the book series among fans, as well as the desire to take technology that I pioneered in the 20th century and bring it into the 21st century, all came together to make this the perfect project for us to develop."
Adventureland only had a vocabulary of 120 words, but Escape the Gloomer recognizes over 1,400 words and features third person narrative with an emphasis on exploration and overcoming obstacles.
"The appeal here for Redwall fans is that we're building upon the familiar backstories but allowing new developments," says Adams.
He also describes the game as family friendly and staying true to the REDWALL characters and spirit of the novel.
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| Gillig the Otter |
"Adams's work was very influential in the adventure-gaming industry," says John Bergquist, of Soma Games. "Similar to The Scout, we're adding to the Redwall stories with new content and allowing the player to use their imagination to have some ownership in the outcome. The format of this particular game is much like a novel, with chapters and text based, including an option to use Amazon's Alexa for voice commands, which bridges the gap between video game and novel."
"I think people are looking for more enjoyable things to do and really desire this in a game," says Adams. "It's not a passive endeavor, you get to have some ownership in the outcome, and it brings us back to the basics of good old fashioned game play, reminding us what made Adventureland such a beloved game almost 40 years ago, and why Jacques book series has also been loved by generations of readers."
"Mr. Jacques was quoted in a 2001 NY Times article as describing his stories being written from the viewpoint of a kid, sitting in the movie house while World War II is on, watching all this magic come on the screen,'' says Skaggs. "In a way, what we've done here with Escape the Gloomer is gone back to a simpler way of story telling, really the way Mr. Jacques would have wanted it."
SOURCE: Soma Games
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