Hello there, present and future players! We know it's been a while, but we have news and updates. As you may know, Sea of Leaves is a self-funded game project, which started as a small experiment on narrative 4 years ago. During all this time, something changed except one thing:

Sea of Leaves is still self-funded and independent.

In the last few months we reached some publishers, but it didn't work out. We don't know why, but we know that Sea of Leaves is unique and we want to talk only to those who can understand it - those who wishlisted the game and those who are about to do that.

Sea of Leaves is a narrative game with an interactive fiction heart.

We use Ink to develop its branching structure, and we modified it to our needs. First thing first, the narrative point of view is the stream of consciousness of an unknown character. [The Stream of consciousness is a literary method/genre/technique used to mimick brain non-linear thinking.] In game the stream of consciousness focus its storytelling on memories, sensations, feelings and impressions, just as a human consciousness. So now imagine for a moment that this inner voice is going to "tell" the story of the game. This story revolves around the disappearance of a young girl from a small village, a remote region in the southern Italy. Have you ever been in Italy? Every region has its own stories, traditional tales, local folklore. Can you imagine an unconventional story told with an unconventional narrative method, with a poetic - surely unconventional - literary style? [previewyoutube=gvNzXH9d9aM;full][/previewyoutube] At its very heart Sea of Leaves is a point-and-click game: as the game starts you have an environment with hidden stimuli. The consciousness can trigger these stimuli, and the environment on its end can expand the consciousness branches. All in all this is a classic gameplay, which hides a special side: the story is implicit and symbolic, and its meaning depends on the player's interpretation. Story - I'm using it in the singular, but it's wrong. Best term would be stories. Sea of Leaves features lots of stories: behind the disappearance there's a whole community, people and places with their own stories. On the background there's an important non-playable character: Mother Nature with its relentless life and death loop. We're researching all these aspect, from traditional folklore to plant and animals. Why?

Because in game we don't talk about the setting, it's the setting that speaks for itself.

Maybe we failed to communicate all of this to publishers, but we hope to manage with potential players. There's one thing left. Sounds and music play a significant role in Sea of Leaves: they can help the player to focus, give meaning, memorize, improve and complete his/her experience. We are going to start a collaboration with a sound design studio in order to experiment an artistic approach which is going to add a new narrative layer to Sea of Leaves. We could buy music and sounds from the hundreds libraries out there, but we want something unique, for us and for the players. We're doing this for the sake of the project, because we know that the result will be amazing. But - there's always a but - this is not for free, and we decided to invest our own money to keep going.

Some said: do a crowdfunding to let people help you.

And after thinking a bit we decided to give it a try! Our very best reward for our backers will be a demo with their name in the credits. and the possibility to give feedbacks and talk with us. There's still 10 days left to have an impact on a truly independent game. Please donate here: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8NvTmyZg0r Thank you! Simona and Firtina

[ 2022-10-13 10:05:16 CET ] [ Original post ]