Triptych Release Announcement
Hello followers of Triptych and Dark Craft Studios. The last six years have been especially harrowing for me. Triptych was due to release in 2013 but unfortunately a full series of RAID 0 and HDD failure killed all my drives, backups included, during a lightning storm. I was rendered speechless. Every ounce of content, every inch of level design, gone. Vanished in an instant. It reminded me of the finality of things, the delicate nature of games design, and of the ever important maintenance of cloud backups.
Triptych was canceled. It was done. For two years not a single thing was done to try to revive it or fix it. We accepted our loss and moved on; games design in Dark Craft froze to a halt. A few sample projects were toyed with, including an Amnesia modification (The First Stone) and a Science Fiction modification (Sapience), but nothing came to fruition. In Winter of 2015 I took to the helm to edit the Triptych script, one that myself and fellow scribe Ian Wiese took three years to write. I trimmed a lot of the fat, streamlined content, and eventually Ian came back aboard to finish the editing process with me. We were happier with the story than ever. It was time to realize a reboot was inevitable.
In February of 2016 I took to the crysis editor once more. Starting from scratch, with a new composer, three new voice actors, and newly cultivated willpower I struck the match to relight the embers of Triptych. In these last thirteen months every level was designed to bring us to the current incarnation, due out for release on March 13th, 2017.
What is Triptych?
Triptych is crafted within the embraces of Gnosticism, Occultism and Sumerian Mythology. Legend has it that an ancient civilization summoned the Demiurge down from the heavens eons ago and paid the ultimate price, but live on as a Necromantic cult that the Brothers Caulm accidentally discovered in their time. Triptych will direct a sinister narrative of the underbelly of philosophy and lost theological ideas in a subtle and insidious story of familial betrayal and Lovecraftian horror.
Triptych is technically right off the pitch with Worry of Newport, the previous effort by Dark Craft Studios to perfect a Lovecraftian walking simulator modification released in 2010-11. In Triptych you explore a linear world and gather visual, audible, and written clues as to the meta-narrative. There is no inventory, nor are there enemies, fighting, combat, puzzles or RPG elements. It is strictly a playable story locked in the first person perspective and centered around exploration and experience.
While in 2010 the genre was fresh and niche, nowadays it is popular. Machine for Pigs, Ethan Carter, Gone to Rapture, Dear Esther, etc are all prime examples of what to expect. However, we strive heavily for story-first engagement. Exploration, similarly to Dear Esther, is linear to a design.
How can I play?
Due for release on March 13th, owners of Crysis 1 must have it fully installed and patched before installation of Triptych, which comes included with its own minor instructions to get it running properly. Save/Load is supported, Xbox 360/1 and Ps3/4 controllers are also supported. (Press B/O to pick up book pages and interact with highlighted objects, respectively.)
Triptych is a modification, not an independent release, and such must be installed as so.
Post Release Support?
The release of Triptych will be monitored carefully. I intend to create two to three patches to address any community discovered bugs, if indeed there are any. A performance optimization patch for AMD users is in the pipelines for April as there are some severe issues regarding AMD with the lighting modifications we use. I’m in touch with their technicians to figure that out.
Once Triptych is released, in mid to late 2017 a Story Package and Developer Commentary will be added. This will feature all VA, Book Pages, some custom short stories by the authors, artwork, and so on. To hold no punches in communication, there are preliminary talks of an expansion pack down the road. This would center on Sarcon, and would be an independent side-released Chapter.
The future?
Dark Craft Studios is going to take a small vacation to appreciate the release of Triptych, our official second title in almost a decade. We do not intend to take that long to release our third. Details are under wraps, but we’re in talks to use either Unreal 4 or Cryengine V to have a AAA release through Steam in due time.
