Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure Thread

Hey everyone, and welcome to a shameless self-plugging thread about this game we’re making called Gibbous.

Gibbous is a classic 2d point and click adventure, and yes it’s a Lucas Arts-like game. It also is, as the subtitle so unsubtle-y gives it away, a loving spoof of everything Lovecraftian, and then some.

The Story

You get to play as two characters (well, technically three):

Don R. Ketype

Grizzled, jaded badass private detective Ketype is hired by mysterious patrons to seek out the dreaded Necronomicon, and that’s how the game starts out. How bad could things go, really? After all, it aint nothin’ but a book of some sorts… Don will cater to your noir needs, including describing how the rain pattered down on the concrete like a neurotic jazz band percussionist, sometimes without anyone around to appreciate his poetic similes.

Buzz Kerwan

Buzz is no more than a mild mannered cust... erm, librarian putting in hours at the Miskatonic University Library to pay for his belated tuition (he’s in his 30s, but that’s cool, man, y’know?). He accidentally stumbles upon the Necronomicon, and also accidentally turns his cat, Kitteh, into a…

Kitteh

...well, a grouch, really. Kitteh is REALLY pissed off at Buzz inadvertently yanking her from her serene, illuminated state - everyone knows cats are buddhists. She doesn’t want to worry about stuff like death cults seeking out the very object that personified her; all she wants is to go back to a worry-free life of sleep and kitty treats. Thus, Buzz and Kitteh set out to find someone, anyone who can help reverse Kitteh’s transformation.

Ok, ok, what about Cthulhu?

This story doesn’t take place, as you’d probably expect, in Lovecraft’s 1920s. It’s a tale of an alternative present where death cults are popping out everywhere, all in competition to find the Necronomicon and awaken Cthulhu, a lot of them just to prove that THEY’re the real cultists, and the rest are just a bunch of posers.

About the game...

As I mentioned before, we’re going for that old school point and clicky goodness. All characters are fully animated, mostly frame by frame, but also combined with some cutout animation; all backgrounds are handpainted (which takes up a lot of time, but that’s the way to go as far as we’re concerned).

The game will feature all known traits of the genre, and one I’m particularly determined to enforce: almost every possible combination of two items, whether in inventory or in the game world, will result in anywhere from one to five unique responses, so no more doing different actions just to have the same grating line thrown back at you. Of course, that takes a hell of a lot of writing, and makes voice acting a harder goal to reach, but, again, it’s something we really don’t want to compromise on.

We’re developing the game in Unity.

The influences!

Gibbous is a love letter to HP Lovecraft, Tim Schafer, Alfred Hitchcock, Steve Purcell,Ron Gilbert, Karl Pilkington and some other folks. Not that we're big on sending love letters to dead people.

The team!

The team consists of three people: myself as a writer, character & background artist, secondary animator, game designer and music composer; a main animator who also does sfx and additional music, and a programmer. We're based in Tirgu Mures, Transylvania, Romania.

Coming soon!

Gibbous is expected to have a fully functional vertical slice demo some time this coming spring, and we definitely want to Kickstart the project, since you can probably tell it will take some finances to get a game like this going smoothly.

So that’s that, looking forward to your feedback and I’ll be happy to answer any and all of your questions, as long as they’re not about programming stuff or winning lottery numbers.

Hey there, people of Earth! Check out this sped up animation process video of an angel that'll be making a short in-game appearance. Hope you enjoy it.

Click!

Hey everyone, our indiedb page is up and running!

Indiedb.com

Thanks for checking us out!

Super cool that this is in Unity.

Awesome work guys.
Will you be using the Linux compatibility plugin for Unity?

Hey there guys. Yeah, we're making it in Unity with the very helpful Adventure Creator plugin.

And yes, we're happy to say that Gibbous will be coming to Linux, too!