14 DAY TRIAL // The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, the new video game from The Astronauts, has big ambitions despite the fact that the ex-People Can Fly team is no longer focusing on the size of the experience.
Adrian Chmielarz, the director and the co-owner of the studio, tells GamesIndustry that “One thing is different, though: we’re no longer excited by mammoth-sized games. We’re still very interested in high quality, but now and in the future we want to focus on smaller projects.”
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will allow gamers to play a detective who has psychic abilities, which allow him to see crimes as they happened, no matter how long has passed since the actual event.
The case he is working on involves a kidnapped boy and will prove trickier than he initially believes.
Adrian Chmielarz thinks that video games could use more innovation because “most of them are the same formula in a constantly updated skin. And that’s fine, but we think there’s room for more variety, for paradigms challenged and for the formulas reinvented. Ethan Carter is evolutionary, not revolutionary, but we still hope it’ll be one of the examples of a different kind of experience that video games can offer.”
The Astronauts is composed of industry veterans, but the team wants to be nimble and flat, with all members sharing both success and failures.
The team has all the resources it needs to create The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and the game will be launched on the PC during 2013, using a tech based on the Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games.
Chmielarz hopes that the game will prove a success and will find a niche between straight-up action and adventure titles.
The Astronauts will rely on sales to generate the resources required for its next project, but Kickstarter is also considered.