Spanish indie developer Appnormals Team has revealed its new pixel art graphic adventure STAY which is coming to Xbox One, co-founder Inaki Diaz made the announcement on a blog post
“It’s a branching adventure game in which you play as yourself, but you happen to have found your way into an internet chatroom populated with one other person: Quinn,” said Diaz who along with this friend Dani Moya started crafting mobile games due to their passion for pixel art and love for old school games.
Stay takes place in real-time, so every second spent in the chatroom is logged, as is every second spent away from it (whether the Xbox One is switched off or is used for other activities). There is also the possibility of Quinn having been abducted and left abandoned in a dingy room, with seemingly nothing but a creaky old PC and an internet connection for company.
The idea for Stay first originated not from thoughts of abduction or online interactions but from conversations about imaginary friendships – and how interesting it would be to build a game around this concept. The notion of irrationally sending messages to your phone and asking for advice, and of the emotions is wrapped up in such a concept.
From that seed the developers formed three core ideas to pursue during development. Firstly, they wanted to make a tribute to the classic CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) books that they grew up reading.
Next, the loved the concept of an adult-Tamagotchi; one with emotional needs instead of simply physical ones. And finally, they were taken by the idea of removing control from the user as much as possible, and of letting the gamer feel much more like a sidekick than occupying the leading role in a story.
Diaz said that noticed over the last few years is how impatient our society has become with new games. Therefore, it was challenging to build a slower-paced experience with deliberate pauses, calls to attention, and opportunities for serious moments of introspection
They deliberately break some of the accepted game rules and conventions, as their goal is to to embrace patience and empathy, the same qualities that needed to deal with real-life relationships.
Emotionally speaking, and without telling much about the story, Stay also borrows heavily from a personal experience that I went through in my life. It’s about how the people around me behaved and provided the right guidance and support just by staying there, listening and helping.
Sometimes that was with the right words, sometimes with just silent company. Even just knowing there’s someone on the other side of a computer screen can be enough to overcome difficulties such as the one Quinn will face, hence the on-screen clocks that track your time with Quinn and without him. Therefore, this demonstrates the players ability to ‘stay’, which is the single strongest aptitude needed to be a good companion for Quinn.
Whether players can fully help him through is predicament is another matter entirely. There are seven different endings and many different deadly outcomes for certain choices.
