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Hi everyone and welcome
to the first developer diary of Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage,
which is currently scheduled for a late Q1-2010 release. In this chapter,
I will give you general information about the game.

First, let me introduce
to you Zoetrope Interactive. We are a small independent game developer
from Istanbul consisting of three core people with sometimes some
outside help. Galip Kartoglu is doing all the programming and scripting
works and me and my brother Oral are doing all the 2D and 3D graphic
work, the story, SFX and music. Erkan Erturk is helping us for this
project with the modelling of some of the game characters.

The Dark Lineage will be
the last game in the Darkness Within series. It takes place right
after the first installment “In Pursuit of Loath Nolder”
that was published at the end of 2007and tells players the rest of
the ominous and dark story of Howard E. Loreid, who was once a police
detective.

The main difference between
two games is that The Dark Lineage was built upon the enhanced version
of our in-house game engine, CPAGE. You will now be able to roam freely
in the game worlds, in contrast with the first installment which was
a pre-rendered adventure game where you had to use pre-defined nodes
to explore the environments. This new feature will add more realism
to the game which is based mostly on exploration just like its predecessor.
The Dark Lineage will also introduce real-time physics and lighting
to improve the gaming experience. Imagine you’re alone in a dark and
abandoned place that you would never want to be in, carrying only
an old lantern to light your way, trying to see what is in the thick,
lingering darkness and dancing shadows that are created by the light
of your own light source! I will talk some more about all of these
features in detail in the next entry of the diary.

In The Dark Lineage, the
previously introduced “Thinking Screen” and “Clue/Thought
Combining System” will make an improved upon return. This time
however, combining clues to progress in the game won’t be a
necessity. So you may forget about the list of clues in the “Howard’s
Mind interface” and can now finish the game without even reading
these! Still, this may be a questionable thing to do, since you’ll
miss so many details about the background story. We made this design
decision because we wanted players to spend more time with the game
world, than in a menu with a list of icons that should be combined
to prove to the game that you are aware of what to do next. Of course,
clues and “secret” clues will remain present and combinable.
We just wanted to keep these clues separate especially for players
who wish to delve into the game’s mysterious story and discover
every detail to get a high score at the end. And yes, the scoring
system will be present and identical to the one in “In Pursuit
of Loath Nolder.”

In contrast with its predecessor,
The Dark Lineage also will have more characters. We prepared a lot
of new and out-of-the-ordinary characters for The Dark Lineage and
I must say that one of them is really disturbing! Also, some returning
friends will be there but this is topic of a future entry.

That’s all for now. I hope
you enjoyed this first diary entry. If you have any questions, I encourage
you to come and post on our forums at www.zoetrope-interactive.com/forum.
Thanks for reading!