Tacoma — A First-Person Sci-Fi Adventure Set in Space
Indie developer Fullbright plans to put us on an interstellar transfer station to explore a mystery in zero gravity
From Gone Home developer The Fullbright Company comes a mystery adventure set on an interstellar transfer station called Tacoma.
You are Amy, reporting for duty on Tacoma Station, which is situated at Lagrange Point 1 between the Earth and Moon. The Station houses a small crew but, upon arrival, you discover that everyone has vanished.
The Station is equipped with Augmented Reality technology that, among other things, enables you to play back recordings of the crew’s activities and interactions in holographic form. This allows you to get to know individual crew members and observe their daily routines, explore their interpersonal relationships and gain insight into the effects of living in relative isolation. In this sense, Tacoma‘s narrative is more about the human condition than outer space. (You know what they say: Wherever humans go, there they are.)
Originally, according to Fullbright, Tacoma was so-named due to its setting in Tacoma, Washington. But as the game took shape, the developer saw that the content would be too similar to that of Gone Home. So a decision was made to leave home and launch Tacoma into unknown territory: outer space.
This change of venue has presented Fullbright with quite a few challenges. How would exploration gameplay work in microgravity? What sort of timeline could yield a structure such as Tacoma Station? How would things look? What would constitute the daily lives and routines of the Station’s crew members?
Fullbright has promised to reveal more about Tacoma and its mysteries in the coming months. We do know that it will be released on Windows/PC, Mac, Linux and Xbox One at some point in 2016. Meanwhile, stay tuned, y’all…
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