TL;DR version:
We discuss the future of NPCs in Dark Fracture
A pledge for higher quality: new animations, new models, motion capture, and lip-sync.
Prologue localization is on the way.
One of the challenges of making a first-person horror adventure as an indie developer is not falling into the trap of becoming "just another indie horror on Steam". We believe that the solution relies on two keywords: quality and authenticity. How did we plan to implement them? Let's start explaining from the latter.
Have you ever wondered why the protagonists of many indie first-person horror games never actually meet other human characters during their adventures? The reason is simple: humans are complicated beings to represent digitally. While the appearance and behavior of fantastical creatures can be shaped in any way the developer desires, a human that doesn't behave or appear as such inevitably ends up looking uncanny. That is why most developers choose to introduce characters through diaries, audio logs, radio communications, and so on. However, we have decided to take the risk.
Some time ago, during the Reddit AMA, we revealed that Dark Fracture will not be your typical indie horror and actually has extra characters present as NPCs for our protagonist, Edward, to interact with. A facility like the body farm, albeit unique, needs more than just Edward to be run — which means he won't be the sole employee. Colleagues, however, won't be the only characters Edward will meet - take a look at this mysterious figure that wanders around the compound 👇
The face of someone who cannot unsee things
Provisional model of a researcher
While there is still a lot of work to do before we will be able to call Dark Fracture a high-quality game, we can confidently say that the bar has raised significantly since Dark Fracture: Prologue. 3D models and textures are being improved, and we have even started using mocap and lipsync technologies to make animations smoother. Here you can find some examples 👇
Edward's arms have now more realistic decals and those weird-looking stitches on his hand have been replaced with an actual scar
A mocap and lipsync test using the model of that mysterious guy
Interactions with items are being fully animated
As earlier announced, Dark Fracture: Prologue is being localized in 7 languages:
French
Italian
Spanish
Portuguese
German
Russian
Chinese
As the integration of certain alphabets is particularly complicated and the development of the complete version of Dark Fracture takes priority over updating the Prologue, the localization update release will take a couple of months.
Don't forget to add Dark Fracture to your Steam's wishlist to not miss any updates 👇
Lastly, if you want to get directly in touch with us, join our community on Discord! 👇
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