In addition to taking on the next title in the Amnesia survival horror series, thechineseroom – makers of the acclaimed Source mod Dear Esther – have announced their next new IP: Everybody’s Gone to Rapture. Revealed in an interview with Beefjack, the “pure story game” has an approximate run-time of sixty minutes, taking place in a sparsely populated open world of six people. thechineseroom promises experimentation within “dynamic, adaptive storytelling” and that they are “re-introducing more interactive elements to the experience”, painting a much different picture of this spiritual successor to the more linearly driven Esther.
“The concept of it is this almost ’60s-’70s Brit science fiction – this John Wyndham, John Christopher kind of thing – of how the end of the world would be responded to in a rural English location,” explains creative director Dan Pinchbeck. “It’s kind of like that film that was made after the Second World War about what would have happened if the Nazis had invaded – and actually, the film was so controversial because not a lot would actually change for the vast majority of people, or they’d just accept it really, really easily.”
The short playtime is meant to encourage multiple play sessions, as one full pass through the entire world takes 20 minutes. The world is populated with landmarks associated with the six remaining NPCs, all feeding into a post-apocalyptic mystery. Everybody’s Gone to Rapture is scheduled for release on PC sometime in the Summer of 2013.