Teku Studios’ project for their dynamic graphic adventure Candle has a funding deadline of 16 August 2013 on the Kickstarter website. At the time of writing it has received $11,840 of its $40,000 target from 440 backers and, with three weeks left to go, we’re getting behind this stunning title.
I initially came across Candle on Steam Greenlight and then headed over to Kickstarter to take a closer look. After seeing how committed the team are to their project and its beautiful artwork, we decided to jump on board and become official backers. They’ve even received an endorsement from American McGee for their hard work: “Check it out. This game looks awesome. The team is pure win. If I were an investor, I’d dump millions on.” And besides, the t-shirt that Programming Lead Miguel Vallés wears in the promotional video – if he thought this might gain the support of fellow The Secret of Monkey Island fans, he was right!
Players take on the role of Teku, a shaman pupil who begins his journey after his village is attacked by the rival tribe of the Atipax. He has a very specific ability that is key to solving many puzzles and uncovering lots of secrets: instead of a hand, he carries a candle that can be lit at certain spots. Our protagonist must do whatever he can to prevent this from being extinguished and, during his quest to rescue survivors, he will unveil the long-forgotten truth about his past.
Teku Studios didn’t want gameplay to drive the entire design of Candle. As they’ve described on their Kickstarter page: “We love games that have a personal touch, games that do not only deliver a fresh and polished gameplay, but a different and interesting art style.” To achieve this, they’re creating all visuals for the title in a traditional, handmade way rather than using digital tools.
The graphics are painted using ink and watercolours and impressively, the animations of every character aren’t digital; instead they’re drawn frame-by-frame before being imported into Unity 4. In addition to this they’ve developed their own shader using DirectX11, which modifies the colours of the environments depending on the status of the candle and time of day. The team say that they’ve wanted this to be their art direction since the early development stages: “There are, however, few-to-zero references out there on how to deal with such a process, and that’s why we believe that our method can truly give a personal and unique feeling to our games.”
Candle for a hand? That’s got to burn.
They admit that it wasn’t easy to achieve this result, but from what can be seen in the video above Candle is absolutely stunning. Teku Studios say that it inherits the spirit of cinematic classics like Out of This World and Flashback (review coming soon) but it also reminded us of newer adventures such as Machinarium. Not much has been revealed about the gameplay so far and this could be what a lot of potential backers will be waiting for, to see that this title has both style and substance. We’re looking forward to hearing a little more about the mechanics of the game and the backgrounds of its characters.
Teku Studios are obviously extremely passionate about their project, having worked on Candle for over a year already without any kind of pay. Head on over to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight to give the team your support and help them release the game on PC in January 2014.
