“To be reborn, you must first forget.”

Project Elea, a first-person storytelling adventure, will explore human existence and identity in the context of interstellar travel and the wake of omniscient A.I. It’s being built in Unreal Engine 4 using PBR (Physically Based Rendering) for realistic lighting. It will support both a VR and non-VR environment.

You’ll play Elea, who comes to consciousness locked down in her cabin on the starship Pilgrimage II, which has been sent to colonize an unexplored Earth-like exoplanet called Solace. She discovers that the rest of the crew has disappeared and the omnisicient A.I., Kazumi, has been hijacked and is offline.

You must deal with lapses in your memory and the imprints of a personal tragedy as well as explore clues and execute manual overrides to restore Kazumi’s virtual memory.

You’ll discover that an eccentric, invasive intelligence wants to take control, having waited in the darkness of space, preparing.

Project Elea will offer a rich, unsettling narrative inspird by such sci-fi authors as Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert. It will alternate between claustrophobic old-school space environments, beautiful vistas and highly detailed interiors.

Developer Kyodai: We love story-driven games and believe the medium can be the next big thing in regard to storytelling. We adore games like Soma, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gone Home, The Unfinished Swan, etc. Project Elea is our own attempts to tell an asymmetric multilayered story from the perspective of the player. Virtual Reality is another logical reason, because of the level of immersion it can add to the whole package – Sci-Fi and VR are a match made in heaven. Last but not least, even though Kyodai is a new studio, each of us has been a part of this industry for a very long time, so we felt the moment has come to leave our own trace in gaming history.

Project Elea is currently in development for Windows/PC with Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2) for VR compatibility.

Additional platforms, such as Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo’s upcoming next-gen console, may be added later. A release date is TBD.