Articy: Please introduce yourselves and tell us about the team at Hack The Publisher working on Centum
Aaron: : My name is Aaron McDowell, and I am the lead writer of the game Centum. I am proud to be part of Hack The Publisher, a small but incredibly dedicated international team of tremendously talented people, whose efforts have made this game a reality.
Articy: Centum is a narrative game full of uncertainty and enigma where even the narrator is unreliable. What was your inspiration for the story?
Aaron: We wanted to take a fresh look at classic point-and-click games of the past, to rethink that experience, and, while drawing inspiration from it, create something new. The choice of the sci-fi horror genre was also intentional, as I believe this genre has the potential to explore important questions that might be difficult to address within other genres. And we sincerely hope that we have managed to say what we wanted to say.
Articy: The players encounter a series of daunting scenarios where their choices and conversations alter the character’s ego states and the course of the narrative. How did you manage to keep track of all the character’s states and the different possible outcomes?
Aaron: This was made possible by a convenient system of global variables. Every dialogue element or action that leads to a change in the player character’s “personality” or has significant consequences for the game world is stored in variables. Similarly, variables are used to track changes in the in-game time, dialogue statuses, and, strictly speaking, all game events in general. For example, in the screenshot, you can see how one of the response options adds a point to the Prophet’s “personality” parameter. In the same way, all other decisions made are recorded in the articy:draft space and saved in the game state.
Articy: At which point in development did you decide you need to use a professional tool and what made you opt for articy:draft?
Aaron: This decision was made even before development began. It was clear that a narrative game with a dialogue system required a professional tool suited to the task. Since several game projects with a similar concept had already been created using articy:draft, it was a natural choice.
Articy: What kind of impact did articy:draft have on your development process?
Aaron: Initially, articy:draft was planned to be used only as a narrative tool. However, from the very beginning, it became clear that this tool was far more powerful than we had anticipated, and from that point on, the entire game was essentially created in articy:draft. Of course, some parts were implemented in Unity, but for the most part, the game was developed entirely within articy:draft
Articy: What features of articy:draft did you use the most and how?
Aaron: : First and foremost, the global variables and the dialogue system, which turned out to be extremely convenient and visually intuitive. Additionally, the Journey feature was incredibly useful and significantly helped with testing and debugging the entire game. Also, the character control system and the ability to add graphical representations of characters, scenes, and locations for better visualization.
Articy: If you were to give a small piece of wisdom to a new studio, what would that be?
Aaron: I could only advise you to grasp the scale of the game and master the tools for its creation as soon as possible. This will help avoid many future problems and the need to redo certain parts of the game. But the most important thing is to know what you want to say and do—and to say and do it exactly the way you want.
Centum is available on: Steam Playstation Nintendo Switch Xbox
