Haven Interview - A Game All About Love and Exploration, From the Makers of Furi

While not a delinquent striking, the debut game of French studio The Game Bakers, titled Furi, was received well both by critics (including our Kai) and fans, with an overwhelmingly positive user review score on Steam.

Iv years later on, the studio is preparing the release of a new game chosen Oasis. However, whereas Furi was all virtually boss fights, Haven is an entirely dissimilar beast. Information technology will exist centered on the loving human relationship between Yu and Kay, who take decided to elope but now find themselves stranded on a forgotten planet.

We interviewed Creative Director Emeric Thoa to discuss the new project from the French studio. Haven is set to release this twelvemonth on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

When trying to explain why you didn't just brand a Furi sequel, y'all mentioned the goal to surprise players and to deliver innovative experiences. Does that hateful you're non planning to ever make sequels to your games, equally a general rule?

Precisely. Unless it is a game that is thought from scratch as a saga over several games, I don't call back sequels are creatively interesting. And I would even add that, unless your game is a really massive hit, they are not commercially interesting either. They are piece of cake and sometimes inexpensive because y'all already have the tools and vision of the game, simply they don't stand up out, which is the key to success in such a crowded environment.

Following the demo, what kind of improvements take you lot made to Oasis, and which ones stemmed specifically from user feedback?

We mostly focused on finishing the rest of the game! We did listen to the actor feedback though, and lots of small improvements regarding accessibility (difficulty tweaks, controls rebind, condolement options and so on), as well as polish the visuals and heave the performances. But players liked the demo, and so there was nothing huge to change!

Volition the dialogue choices eventually lead the relation and/or overall story in different directions?

The dialogue choices have consequences to the electric current dialogue itself, and some choices impact the catastrophe, but it's not a game with big story branchings. The selection for Oasis was to take a well-written story about two "defined" characters, rather than go hard on interactive narration. To exist honest, should it be for narration or level blueprint, I've always preferred handcrafter over procedural.

Why practice you think that relationship-focused games (with the exception of visual novels, maybe) aren't really common?

That's a mystery to me. When we pitched Haven to publishers, early in development, some of them said to united states that we should brand it a "boy meets girl" story. They thought it had more tension, that it was stronger. They actually missed the indicate that an established human relationship story is stiff precisely because it doesn't exist. Yet, a lot of people tin can relate to that. I don't sympathize why it's not more present in video games or even movies.

How long volition it have to complete Oasis on average?

I'd say average 12 hours, for a normal playthrough without exploring everything. Initially, I wanted to make it a 6 hours game, because I think we need more "brusque and impactful games". But hey, we had lots of ideas and it kinda stretched a little.

Y'all recently announced that Haven will be available on PlayStation v, also. Are you targeting the launch window for this platform?

We don't know when it'due south going to launch precisely. We are still aiming to launch Haven in 2020 and so that might end up existence a pretty good fit, yep.

Having worked on the PlayStation five, which do you believe to be the organisation's strengths and weaknesses (if any)? Also, are you going to raise Haven through the PS5 hardware and if so, how?

Nosotros are at the veeeeery early on steps of working on PS5. It's a bit early for me to say. We will of grade endeavor to make the best use of the PS5 new hardware and features. I thing that'due south the most exciting to me is to use the new gamepad haptic features and a 120FPS framerate to make gliding every bit smoothen every bit possible.

How volition the PS5 version of Oasis stack up against the PC ane at max settings?

I have no idea at the moment. Haven is non especially a "tech criterion game". Then I guess the difference is going to be thin. Information technology's going to be a moving and unique story on all platforms!

The game is as well coming to Xbox 1. What virtually Xbox Serial X, though?

We are aiming to bring Oasis on as many platforms as we tin.

Feel complimentary to add annihilation else you lot might believe to be worth mentioning well-nigh Haven and The Game Bakers.

One thing I like to add almost the game is that information technology's a solo game designed to welcome a co-op partner. It's not necessarily a co-op game. People tend to think they MUST play it co-op, simply information technology is not mandatory. But of course, nosotros'd love to hear that it'll make couples share a moment together!

Cheers for your time.