14 DAY TRIAL // Gone Home developer The Fullbright Company has revealed that its next project will be an immersive story-based exploration game, not unlike its previous hit.
The information has been leaked by a new job listing that the company has posted, which tells that it is looking for a programmer and an animator.
The description for the latter position is a dead giveaway:
"Fullbright is looking for an animator to own the character art side of our games. As with Gone Home, our focus is on immersive, first-person story exploration games and we are looking to expand the aesthetic experience to include the player sharing the playable space with subtle, expressive, high-fidelity characters."
Gone Home's characters only existed as voice-overs and pictures, but their existence was pretty vivid due to the game's brilliant narrative tone that evoked their presence in the player's mind. This time around though, it seems that the indie developer is looking to chance things a bit and actually render them on-screen.
The game was less of a game in the traditional sense, and more an experiment in first-person interactive storytelling, taking place in a single house, following a young woman returning home after travelling abroad, only to find her entire family gone.
Although everything about it, from the premise, the creepy vibe, the trailers and all the rest, might give the game a distinct horror feel, Gone Home is a pretty tame adventure game that focuses on exploration and narrative, and is an interactive novel about regular folks, exploring how stories can be delivered as a game.
The studio has also shortened its name and made it a bit more swanky, from the clunky The Fullbright Company to simply Fullbright, and unveiled a new and quite stylish logo.
"Going forward we are simply Fullbright, and will be continuing our focus on creating immersive, unforgettable story exploration video games," Steve Gaynor writes on the Fullbright blog.
Since releasing Gone Home, the developer lost its previous programmer and co-founder, Johnemann Nordhagen, who moved on to start his own studio, Dim Bulb Games, and ex-BioShock 2 level designer Tynan Wales moved in, joining his previous 2K Marin colleagues, Karla Zimonja and Steve Gaynor, at Fullbright.
For now, there are no details pertaining to the upcoming game, aside from the fact that it will share Gone Home's focus on story and exploration, but we'll come back with the scoop as soon as the studio reveals anything.