The Unwritten Critias and the Lost Island: A full open-world game

Trailer:



Inspired by a novella with the same title, we are creating an island – an open world waiting for daring explorers. Now, after hundreds of working hours, there is something we’d like to share with you: the first captions – 100% in-game – taken from this unnamed island.

If you are interested to learn the most probable interpretation ever given to the historical mystery of Plato's story of Atlantis, this game should offer you an unexpected answer. But be aware: it is not a story about aliens or ancient people with paranormal powers.

The Unwritten Critias and the Lost Island is a quest leading you through an open world. You’ll have the freedom to just stroll and explore the island at will or, if you decide to follow the main story line, you’ll be able to solve the quests and progress towards unveiling the mystery.

For more information visit our website!

 

Systems used:

- Ceto for water
- SpeedTree for trees
- kode80's Volume Clouds
- Gaia

 

Systems created in-house:

- Critias grass system

- Critias tree optimization system

 

Systems in-progress:

- Critias decal system
* Forum work in progress *

- Critias detail system
* Forum work in progress *

 

This is a beautiful project! Appreciate all the work you are putting into these systems for the benefit of the community. Look forward to seeing them shine even more on the Lost Island.

 

After solving many technical difficulties that arise during the creation of an open-world game and re-working of the graphics, we finally thought that it is appropriate to launch our project's website! Check it out here!

While there's a lot of work to be done, we can say that we are surely moving on towards the game's demo that will feature a very important part of the quest!

The observatory that will play an very important part in the game's story-line:

 

Looks really great! Nice to finally see what you where working on : )

 

Thanks!

I am also looking forward on sharing the trailer and the first game-play video along with the game's demo.

I would also like to point out that it is:

- Not a walking simulator
- Not a corridor game (will be fully open world)
- Story-driven, first-person quest (think a first-person Syberia, but open world)

 

For those interested, we have a very early pre-demo cinematic trailer. You can find it here!

We are slowly, but surely, moving our way towards the official trailer, the gameplay trailer and the Steam demo! (Yes there will be a demo on Steam)

 

Our demo is coming soon! Here you can see some images from the demo’s environment. The astronomical observatory is a place where the player will be able to see some spectacular celestial bodies.

 

With a lot of hard work and dedication we finally have our first official with game-play, trailer! You can watch it here!

The game's demo is also finished and will arrive shortly on 'Greenlight'! It will contain a full chapter of the quest, filled with mystery and wonders.

I'll update then since we will require your support!

 

Something to be proud of! I wouldn't overdo it with some of the post-processing effects though.

 

looks good. Guess this is some type of puzzle game?

 

Open-world adventure/quest/puzzle. Depends on how you define puzzle . Of course, we can't present the full island in the demo, but the full should be more than a linear step-by-step quest/puzzle.

We wanted to add a little more flexibility to standard linear old-school quests like 'Myst' or 'Syberia' by making it full and truly open-world.

 

Yeah the game like the Myst came to my mind when i saw this, seems like allot of details work. Keep up the good work.. Bumps.

 

Wow that is amazing! Can not wait to play it! Helps that it is also a gorgeous world you built

So kind of a Myst meets Ethan Carter?

 

Hehehe, maybe, I don't know . As soon as we'll publish the demo, I guess everyone will find out what's it about.

I'll post here later with the 'Greenlight' page, since we need to pass that first.

 

Trailer looks good, although in direct light everything (outside) seems overly saturated. I don't know if this can be considered a stylistic choice, but it's the only real thing that kept my from focusing on the content. My brain was saying - Wow! those trees are super green, Wow! that water is super blue, Wow! that sky is super Yellow.

Other than that great presentation.

 

Now that Steam Direct will be $100, are you planning to change your plans?

 

I don't see how Direct would influence any developer's plans. It is just that you have to pay 100$ per-game instead of 100$ per all your games.

Of course, those who publish many quick made small games, I guess would have to pay more. However we worked many many months on this project, so it is not very bad for us, we had a minimal development budget that included tools and some publishing fees.

And to be honest any well made game (even mobile) take quite a lot of time to build, if you polish them really well. So in your development budget you would include that 100$ tax, and you would work really hard so that your game makes at least your investment.

 

Am I understanding steam direct wrong? I thought instead of needing people to vote on your game in order to get it published, you can just pay 100 bucks and get it on the store. I thought it would replace the GreenLight system.

 

I think that maybe I did understood 'Direct' wrong . You only need to pay 100$ now? No more votes required?

EDIT: I've just read the whole thing again, and I admit it, it was not clear to me whether we will still need votes even if we will pay 100$ per game since it was not explicitly mentioned there. However after reading it again, it seems to me that only the fee is required now. To compensate, the curators have a lot more power than before with the new system, giving out more visibility to people who have interesting games.