Death… Could it truly be the end? Can something so intricate,
so complex as a human being simply cease to exist? Or is there more
to existence than the mere act of drawing breath? Millions believe
in the final judgment that is to come after life as we know it comes
to an end. An ancient prophecy of divine
punishment and eternal bliss… The answer for all mortal suffering, the
ultimate justice, a piece of the incredible plan that is so complex that it cannot
be comprehended by the human mind.

Millions more believe
in reincarnation. The return of the immortal spirit to the realm
of the living in a new shell… A cycle of
birth, death, and rebirth that can only be broken when the spirit
sees past the illusion that is the mortal world. A tremendous journey
to realize we are all part of something greater, an all-encompassing
entity, the ultimate and only true consciousness, Brahma.

Despite our beliefs, despite our struggles to understand the deeper
meaning of life, what if the truth of human existence had been known
with unfaltering certainty millennia ago? What if it had been kept
hidden for all these years?

Currently under development by Qwato Interactive Studios, Awaken draws inspiration from the 19th century Victorian high society. The
era saw a curious interest in mummified Egyptian corpses. It was
not uncommon for a British aristocrat to invite guests for a mummy
unwrapping. The quasi-ritualistic process offered a way to experience
a spiritual connection to the ancient corpses.

Awaken proposes that five mummified children were found during this
period. Yet they were far from the heart of Egypt. They were not
hidden within an awe-inspiring pyramid. This was not the glorified
preservation of a pharaoh. The children were found in an extremely
humble makeshift tomb. It almost seemed like an accident that they
were mummified at all.

After the initial discovery, the five mummies were transferred to
the Americas. They seemed to be once again lost in time. Their incredible
secret was hidden. What they had been guarding was unknown. The truth
of their existence hidden from the mummy traders of the 19th century,
the children had disappeared for a second time. Perhaps they had
been diminished to little more than a footnote in some travel log.

But how can the greatest truth be kept hidden forever? These ancient
mummies, these Children of Light could not be farther from ordinary.
They held the key to the ultimate mystery. They were the guardians
of the gate that kept the very secret of human existence. The time
might be at hand to finally definitively answer questions asked millennia
ago. But you cannot let this sacred truth, this hidden power to fall
into the wrong hands. It is time for a journey. The core of your
being, your very soul must embark upon a path that could lead you
to the only secret that is worth knowing.

Awaken is without a doubt a rather ambitious undertaking. The game
not only features a highly interesting storyline and intriguing setting,
but it also intends to merge together key aspects of several well-known
games. Putting the emphasis on the storyline, Awaken intends to challenge
players to explore its unique setting and take advantage of several
distinctive game play mechanics. The game will be accessible through
the Internet, allowing players to join the experience with no installation
requirements.

Scott Frost, the director
of Qwato Interactive Studios, has provided us detailed information
about their upcoming project. Even as development
efforts continue, here’s your chance to gain some insight into
this remarkable project:

[Ugur Sener]: What can you tell us about the story behind the game? Can you
provide any details about the setting?

[Scott Frost]: “During
the 19th century a new form of entertainment emerged in Victorian
high society. Local surgeons would draw large
crowds to their homes to perform mummy unwrappings.

Eager to experience a macabre connection with the eternal Egyptian
corpses, people would flock to witness the unwrappings. Some believed
the corpses held medicinal properties, capable of curing all human
disease.

While the phenomena continued, the mummy import business raged throughout
Europe. As was common, most of the shipments were never tracked and
eventually disappeared from record.

One shipment was sent to an unknown destination in the Americas.
It contained the remains of five mummified children, discovered in
a remote makeshift tomb, far from the heart of Egypt.

Hidden as they were in death, they would disappear once more…

Now, amidst the chaos of modern society, the truth of human existence
has been discovered. This truth possesses the power to forever change
our world, our beliefs, our fate. Demi, a deformity born of loathing
and despair, will stop at nothing to ensure that it does. He seeks
out these Children of Light; ancient sentries to the gate that will
unlock this truth.

You must be the first
to locate the Children of Light. Use all of your abilities to stop
Demi and his disciples from unlocking their
power. Your only guide through this torment is Ari’ana; a deity
who haunts your sub-conscience. Her reality will become the dreamscape
from which your soul must Awaken.”

Awaken was
originally born years ago as a point and click adventure game combining
3D
characters and objects composited with 2D photographs
of hand made miniature models. In 2002, we spent over a year building
the core engine and shopped it around to all the major publishers
in the US, as well as many European publishers. If you can name them,
we have talked to them. Without a previous AAA+ title under our belt,
we were told the product was “too niche.” Although “creative
and very cool looking”, it would not be able to become a cash
printing machine. It was considered to belong to a dead genre and
the content was not mainstream. We heard this from almost everyone
we spoke with. Maybe they were being kind to us, but we really thought
we had developed something that nobody had seen before.

The original DirectX demo is still available here if you (or your
readers) want to download and play it. http://www.Awaken.net/demo – just grab and save the install.exe file. There is a readme.txt
file as well.

Since the story is the most important aspect of Awaken, we decided
to scale the concept way back and slash our development budget by
99.9%. Welcome to v.2.

We set the following guidelines as part of our newly defined scope:

1. Weave the world of Awaken into a user interface that combines
these inspirational elements:
– the simplistic top down pixel and tile design of The Legend of Zelda.
– the rich fiction of Zork.
– the environmental discovery process found in Myst.
– the dark adult edge of Trilobyte’s 7th Guest and 11th
Hour.
– the anticipation of the puzzles from Google’s Da Vinci Code quest.

2. Create a free to play
game on the internet that lives entirely within a cross-platform
compatible web browser requiring no client
installation on the user’s machine.

In addition we want to
create a multi-player experience in the less traditional sense.
We are firm believers that the people who come
to play Awaken will be looking for a casual game they can hop in
and out of at any time. They will probably not be looking for a game
where they have to spend hours working with other players to accomplish
objectives and goals. That said, we are providing areas within Awaken that are like large chat rooms. So for instance, if you enter a building
and there are other characters inside, you will be able to chat with
them about what they are experiencing. We are hoping that as characters
get engaged in the world, they will take on the persona of their
souls and help feed the fiction for other players. As far as this
fiction goes, no topic is really off limits. This is an adult oriented
game, therefore, we are expecting our players to let loose. Granted,
we’ll be on the lookout for any racial hatred, but pretty much
anything else is fair game as long as it feeds the fiction.

Overall, it is a single player experience, but we have provided
places where multiple-players can come together and interact. In
addition, we are working on a future system where users will be able
to create their own cults. These cults will have special meeting
places in the world where they can bring their cult together to talk
about whatever they like. Cults can either be members only, or open
to the public. In addition, there are methods for recruiting any
player to a cult. The bigger the cult, the more powerful it becomes
and certain characteristics about each soul will change based on
that.

We are hoping to launch
beta of “Chapter One. Verse One.” in
Q4 2006. In the meantime, users can register their souls as http://www.Awaken.net.

In addition, we are using the following technologies and contractors
for development:
– SwishMax for SWF development and coding by our lead
programmer Elmar Bloss
– Adobe Photoshop
– Final Cut Pro
– Lightwave 3D
– Pro Motion for sprite development
– Textwrangler for PHP development
– MySQL for the database backend
– Soul Artwork by Rebecca Dell Conway
– Music composed by Steven Gutheinz
– Trailer Narration by Jim Greulich
– Pixel Artwork by Mick Hanrahan

[US]: What kind
of characters will players be controlling? What does the “resurrection” process
entail?

[SF]: You have a soul. This is the fundamental concept of Awaken.
When a user begins the experience, they are tasked with creating
a custom soul that is unique to them. The soul is created based upon
attributes and characteristics similar to human essence. These attributes
are defined as follows:
– Physical – That which makes up the perceived physical state of a human.
– Logical – That which defines the ability to think and reason of a human.
– Emotional – That which defines the sensations and experiences of a human.
– Spiritual – That which defines the beliefs, morals, and ethics of a human.
– Mortal – That which defines the conceptual understandings of life and death
of a human.

There are a total of 64 character types in all that a player can
choose from. For our beta launch, we will probably have close to
all 64 of them created at a player level, but will only have a small
selection available that physically match the on screen avatar that
you would walk around with. We are hoping to have all 64 avatars
created in the months post beta launch. Most of the characters were
created in the vein of goth, but our character artist Rebecca Conway
has done a fantastic job of giving each soul its personal identity.
We are hoping that users will enjoy her artwork as well as that of
our pixel artist Mick Hanrahan.

The resurrection process is simply the ability to log back in where
you left off. Because we are developing a web based game, we are
taking great care to ensure that anything we can know about a soul
can be tracked and stored at the database level.

[US]: How will the players be able to shape their characters? Will
the game include strong role-playing elements?

[SF]: As users move through
the Awaken experience, the composition of their soul’s attributes will be challenged and evolved through
their actions, interactions with other characters, and the decisions
they make. It is a model based upon analysis of psychological research.
Although it includes traditional elements such as strength and armor,
these are not humanistic qualities that can evolve and mature. Users
can gain experience as well as money for upgraded items and increased
levels of human essence. The journey will pose fundamental questions
about their existence and constantly engage them on an emotional
level through what we call “emotional stray clauses.”

Once a soul is created
users have the option to post their soul into the ‘tomb of souls’.
The tomb of souls is a global portal community that captures information
regarding each soul: where
it originates, what it looks like, and the essence it contains. The
tomb of souls is a tool to track users and allow them to search and
find others around the globe with similar interests.

[US]: What kind of challenges can players expect to face during
the game?

[SF]: While there are
no true hack’n’slash or twitchy
trigger elements to Awaken, we are planning some navigational challenges
to moving characters through the world to avoid the badasses as we
like to call them. When a badass is encountered, we take care of
the fighting for you. The outcomes and results are randomized based
upon pre-defined algorithms that take several factors into account.
Any rewards from the encounter are automatically added to the soul’s
inventory if there is room.

These items will invariably be used to progress the plot forward,
but at the same time, you must decide which items to carry and which
ones to drop. It will be interesting to see statistics on the types
of items that users are carrying around. We want to make all of these
statistics transparent and available for everyone to see. So for
instance, we can find out how many people stopped to look at the
dead dog. We can see how many people are carrying a knife versus
a chain. This kind of data can then be used as we develop future
chapters for the game.

Each chapter in the world
will also present a different final puzzle that must be solved
before proceeding to the next chapter. They are
essentially mind bending games designed to test a soul’s mental
skills and patience. We tried to select puzzles that are difficult,
but not impossible. After all, what’s the point in playing
a game if you are not challenged by it? Will people get frustrated?
Absolutely. But there are also those out there that will find the
puzzles too easy.

[US]: Can you give me some details about the game’s interface? How
will players control their characters and interact with others?

[SF]: Awaken is a 2D top
down tile based world exploration game. It hearkens back to Zelda,
but also incorporates a Zork style command
prompt, with 7th Guest style pop up animations and shock scenes.
Think bloody head pops up with shrieking woman…nice! Almost
all of the interface and command options are presented on one screen.
We have tried to maximize real estate in a compressed flash interface
screen. The challenge for us is to make it look good while conserving
bandwidth for graphics, sound, and music. It is not easy, especially
when trying to design a game that can scale as the user community
grows.

[US]: What can you tell me about the game’s overall atmosphere?
How do you expect this to be communicated in a multiplayer setting?

[SF]: The best way to play Awaken is in a dark room with your speakers
turned way up. The mood we are trying to create is a dark one. Since
it is often times difficult to display pertinent details at the pixel
level, we rely on sound and graphic descriptions to create the imagery
we want.

In addition, our composer
Steven Gutheinz will be creating some beautifully haunting music
for us to set the right mood. Steve is
definitely the most talented young Hollywood composer out there.
If I was in the film business, I’d have him score every single
movie I made. I feel privileged to have him as part of Awaken.

We are hoping that as players move through the experience, they
will undoubtedly add their own flavor to the stories and descriptions.
For instance, there is a diary in the first world that contains a
registry of entries. Those that find it, can write their own answers
to a question posed, or their own random thoughts. We hope that these
kinds of items will also add content to the world for people to explore,
and just make them think.

[US]: What kind of environments can players expect to explore?

[SF]: We’ve started
off with a pretty elaborate tile set for the first few chapters,
including your traditional environmental
elements and multiple building styles and types. The ultimate objective
is to basically imagine this large town where a lot of random people
from all over the world have come in search of answers. People sleeping
in cars, tents, little encampments begin to sprout up. All the while,
people are searching for the Children of Light. When one is found,
others will try to steal them away. So it becomes this never ending
cycle of treasure hunting.

As far as specific environments go, you have your run of the mill
swamps, dead forests, scorched earth and water elements. Since we
are trying to manage CPU memory, we are somewhat limited in Flash
as to how complex we can make the environments. We will definitely
be relying on the tile set, the fiction, and photo-realistic pop
ups that give visual clues and detail.

[US]: Will the game have a distinct beginning and ending or will
it be an ongoing multiplayer world?

[SF]: It will definitely have a beginning and a projected story
path with several endings already in mind. However, we are hoping
that if we can build a community around Awaken and make it last,
we will be able to provide many new chapters. If this becomes the
case, we may eventually weave fan fiction into the world of Awaken to create a more inclusive environment for our end users. We really
want the fans to help shape where the story goes and how things unfold
because ultimately, it is their world and we are just opening up
the doors to let them in to see for themselves.

As far as the chapters
go, if Awaken proves popular, we are developing our engine to be
able to produce new chapters every two weeks. We
are hoping to shave this down to about a week’s time because
people definitely want to experience new things. When we officially
launch (post beta), we plan to have 3 chapters available.

Just Adventure thanks
Scott Frost for sharing detailed information with us about Qwato
Interactive Studios’ upcoming project Awaken.
Based on the information provided by Mr. Frost, Awaken certainly
looks like a very promising game. Exploring the game’s world
as a spirit and seeking the Children of Light can make for a very
interesting and engaging experience. Having the opportunity to exchange
observations with other players could enrich the game. Allowing players
to directly contribute to the evolution of the game’s world
could make Awaken a very distinct and ever-changing virtual universe.

Unfortunately,
before we can dive into the game’s world, we’ll
have to wait a little longer. In the meantime, you can take a trip
to the official Awaken Web site and register as a soul waiting resurrection.
The official site can be found at: http://www.awaken.net. You can
take a look at the teaser trailer for Awaken. The
trailer is available through the game’s official site as well
as YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY-2m1AA7-c)
and Google Video (http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8791281945498908495&hl=en).