Cogoo

Howdy! This is Sangpil, Executive Producer of Tobor.

We just finished Steam Next Fest, and we had many players enjoy our Demo. Throughout the Next Fest we received many support and also productive feedback on how to improve the game. Thank you so much for the support!

I recently had the privilege to talk to a game media called MultiPlatform and I shared the development story behind our upcoming game Tobor. Today I wanted to take the time to share it with you.

FRESH IDEA

Tobor was initially inspired by a New York Broadway play called Sleep No More. We loved its experimental idea where the audience can walk around a mansion and choose where to be, eventually choosing what part of the story they will experience while the whole play runs on a huge mansion with many rooms. We immediately thought it would be cool to bring this experience to gaming, and we wanted to add interactions that could make the gaming experience even more unique.

Frankly, we've never seen a game that does this. So we had to simulate and redesign the production process, laying out all the problems we would need to solve to make this a great game experience.

We knew that making the whole environment into a mansion like Sleep No More would be costly. We needed to add many fantasy aspects to implement the interactions where the player can change the story leading to multiple endings. We started searching for ways to solve this problem, and we were inspired by Do Not Feed the Monkeys with the core mechanics of watching a surveillance camera.

As game developers, one of the biggest choices we had to make was dividing the venue between where the player was watching outside the surveillance camera and where all the characters played their roles inside the camera. By our definition, the interactions had to be the actions that the player takes to interfere with the events that occur inside the camera and the events inside the camera to affect the welfare of the player outside the camera.

ENGAGING STORY

What we think is really cool with Tobor's storytelling is that all the characters that appear in the game (we call them The Cast) have independent stories. When all these characters walk around and interact within the story, they experience common events, but they all have different perspectives on those same events.

Rather than following the common approach of focusing on a single protagonist, the team decided to make an ensemble cast featuring multiple principal actors who offer diverse perspectives on the central event in the story.

Trying to put the unique storytelling aspects together, we've designed it so that the player's choices eventually change the outcome of the ending, drawing in the player experience from just watching to being part of the whole story.

Another goal we had was limiting the screens that the player can see at one time, while the whole story runs simultaneously. We wanted to limit this because there was just too much information that the player would have to digest if they were expected to follow the whole story.

There are 16 surveillance screens in Tobor, though the player can only see one screen at a time and needs to choose which character or event they want to follow.

On the other hand, we think this experience adds a lot of replay value to the player. At the end of the day, we've created a game where the player can replay the game more than eight times, and there will still be interesting stories they can discover throughout the way.

CHOICE-BASED GAMEPLAY

Players can make a lot of choices in Tobor. They can choose which characters to follow, which screens to watch, which character to help out, which intelligence to report back to HQ, which items to scan, which dialogues to collect, and which routes to take during the nightmares.

On all the choices that the players can make, we've added description and story telling as much as possible. For example, the scan objects are used to tell a lot of the background history of the venue Undercroft and the founders.

Ultimately, because the player is making all these choices, we believe the player will be able to assimilate oneself with our Tobor character playing a spy robot for RA Corporation. What's more interesting is that, as the player gradually understands more of the story will affect these choices. For example, depending on the story you've experienced, the player would have to choose whether to betray the Spy agency or not.

GRAPHICS

The visual part was a hard one. As a small team of 6 people, we have two graphic artists and one person that does all the FX and animation. So we definitely had to find a middle ground when designing the concept art of this game.

Overall, the most difficult problem we had to solve was dividing the visual concepts of what's real and what's a dream. As for what's real, we tried to make it dark and realistic enough to show the details when watching a surveillance camera. For the dreams and nightmares, we tried to make them look psychedelic and weird using a lot more vibrant colors.

The game eventually progresses, where the player can't tell what's real and what's a dream. From a certain point into the game, these two very different art styles mix to create a unique experience.

The artists' goal while working on the game was to make the player feel as if they are having a blurry nightmare.

"I imagined that these dreams would be filled with situations that don't make any sense, such as unrealistic objects and physics. Moreover, I wanted to express the unexpected connections between different spaces including sudden chases by weird monsters etc", — shares the artist Noir Dochi, the graphic artist at Tobor.

The work of Tobor's team is all about constant communication and collaboration. While working on the graphics, the artists usually invite the animators and visual effects team to discuss how all the puzzles will match depending on the goal. They discuss all the details and steps which are necessary to create before handing the baton to the programmers.

After the completion of the raw art sssets, the next step is to deliver them along with comprehensive guidelines for their implementation.

Tobor, being a 2D game, requires most of the raw assets to be directly implemented in the code. During creation of these assets, it is essential to divide them into appropriate layers and components that can be efficiently incorporated into the game without delay. It is crucial for the artist to have a clear visualization and plan for these components before creating them, as this saves time.

IMMERSIVE SOUND

The main theme song in Tobor feels lonely and dark to help the players imagine themselves alone in an abandoned research facility, trying to focus on the given mission with a strong desire to get out.

"Sure, I've proceeded the song in minor melody using instruments like an organ and a piano to emphasize the loneliness in the music, — says Navi Nail, responsible for the music in the game. — Also, I've maximized the use of reverb and cut-off sequences to express the darkness and the tragic atmosphere at the bottom of the sea."

Hope this can help players understand the problems we are tackling every day in the development process of Tobor. Please feel free to leave any questions on the comments.

Thanks for taking your time to watch this episode and hope to see you all in another dev log episode.

Cheers,

Sincerely,

Sangpil