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Dark Trip
Dark Trip - DevGAMM Gdańsk Game Roast Winner Interview
iTales VR producer Alexander Nasonov talked us through one of the most interesting VR concepts we've seen in recent times, while the player in the background... uses some drugs?
Audio transcription
"Hi friends, I'm at the DevGAMM in Gdańsk, day two, and I'm here joined by Alex, who's telling me about a pretty quirky, pretty interesting, pretty bold VR game which is called Dark Trip, which, you know, deals with drugs. And that is something we've seen sometimes in video games, for example The Witcher or Fallout or Bioshock in a way, but you go very, of course, very first person here. So why are you trying this approach with drugs in VR?
There are a number of reasons, and we can go either from artistic perspective, director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is Terry Gilliam, and also there is the whole room in our game that is dedicated to the Tideland movie about a girl and her drugs-addicted parents. So it is there, the reference to the artists, to the directors who work with the themes of hallucinations, psychedelics and drugs. And from the business point of view, we had to decide where we have to go when we do the Escape Room game, which there are plenty of them, and we wanted to do something unique. And as we, like me and my partner, we both love David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, we love those artists."
"Rest in peace, David Lynch.
Less than a month ago, he passed away, and we are trying to keep his flag, and this is how we act. So the drugs, the psychedelics, the hallucinations, the something oppressive is the big part of the art, while games are the part of the creative industry, so we had to choose our path, and we chose this path."
"This very quirky path. Okay, so we have a player in the background, so what is he doing?
What are we going to do here? Because of course, there is this psychedelic aspect to it, but first you have to use drugs yourself. So what are the mechanics like? How do you use drugs in order to escape these rooms?
The overall gameplay is that there are puzzles, there are environments, there are ways to solve puzzles and to see objects during the gameplay, and when a player is able either to be sober or to use drugs to solve puzzles, and in this case the puzzles change, the environment changes, the gameplay changes, the room changes, and the aspect of the metagame, which involves a player being a detective who is fired or not even fired, is forced to try to solve a case of a kidnapped girl, so in order to..."
"That's the main mystery, right?
Right, of course. This is a mystery escape room, and when you go through it, when you complete the game being sober, you miss the evidences that can be found when you are in hallucinations, and the whole setting, the plot is that a player, while going through the game, he loses the understanding of what is the reality and what is the hallucination, and in terms of metagame and replayability, once you complete the game either sober or on drugs, you find only half of the evidence, and that means that you have to complete the game at least once again to get all the clues, all the photographs, all the notebooks to understand what is happening, like, you know, maybe in Hitman 3 there is a scenario when you solve the case of the murder in the mansion, I think it's called murder in the mansion, and in our game..."
"Very James Bond-like.
In our game we have a similar, but more simple system of getting the evidence and trying to get the picture.
Very interesting. So, how are we using the drugs here? How do you actually... What is the exact mechanic for us to use drugs, and what type of drugs? Are they fictional, are they real-life drugs, real-world drugs, as in, you know, weed or cocaine, or how do you deal with pills, how do you deal with..."
"They are simply pills. In the game setting, in the game world, they are called Denpa, which is the world for the truth, and there is a journal that player gets into the game, the prologue, that says that Denpa shows the truth and helps to solve riddles of the life. And there are unknown drugs of unknown origins, and the player has just to get them, to get high and to see the things that otherwise are hidden."
"Are you searching for some controversy? Do you think there can be?
Fun press? Good press? Controversy?
Definitely, we are in search of controversy. The whole reason that I told business-wise, the escape room genre is like our crowd genre, but it works so good in VR, and that's why we had to do some controversy. So, there's drugs and the whole idea that the case a player investigates is happening in the abandoned BDSM lab by Nazi, by Dr. Mengele."
"Alright.
And Dr. Mengele is somehow, is like the character of the game, that you never interact with, but you see the leftover of his experiments, the diaries of his experiments, all those things.
And the mansion you are investigating, later you understand that it was the laboratory back into the times of World War II, with the terrifying experiments, how to say it, like evil experiments. And it seems that somehow in the metaphysical sense, they are still take place, the experiments. And the player himself, themselves, whatever you say, are the part of the subject of these experiments."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or as you mentioned, Wolfenstein and other games dealing with Nazi experiments in search of the super soldier, right? So, final question is a double one, okay?
This is VR. Do you think that VR already felt like something that is transporting you to another world, that makes you a little bit high in the sense that you are experimenting something that surrounds you? So the experience is really, really fits this idea, because it already makes you feel like being transported elsewhere. And what do you think about VR nowadays? Like, you know, the availability, the platforms, how can games thrive in VR?
Because it always goes like, you know, up and down. And we are seeing like some new surge of new VR games as of late."
"So in terms of the technology itself, and this immersion thing, like definitely we are going to the Matrix state. Everything that we have seen in the movies like Matrix, it's becoming a reality. And definitely it is frightening thing. At the same time, like you cannot stop the progress. So the progress is there. And then if you are like a creative person or working creative industry, you can either to like try to get rid of it or like to get away, or you can try to use what..."
"Embrace it.
Yeah, embrace, use as a tool for the business or creativity that you do. And that was our approach.
Do you feel high? Do you feel like you're high or a little bit high, right? A little bit dizzy?
Can you like the last picture?
All right."
"The last picture in what room?
You just need to...
This is completely out of it. We're live.
You just need to take the key."
"Keep rolling here.
Ah, the last picture you have to get...
I think he said man, these drugs are good.
You have to get pills in order to find you."
"Okay.
So this is exactly what's...
Yeah, you're looking for, right?
What's happening.
Yeah."
"What did he say? He said this drug is good.
No, he said that he have found two evidences in the first room and he doesn't want to go to the next room, but he wants to find the third evidence in the room.
Before leaving."
"Before leaving.
And that's not possible because he has to be sober.
He is sober.
Oh, he's sober.
Now he is in the second room."
"All right.
But I told him that you have to get high to find the third photograph.
We will keep this in the interview because that was interesting.
Okay, so you were talking about the matrix etc."
"And I found that answer very interesting.
And the other thing was, how do you feel about the VR landscape, you know, as a market for new games to thrive?
So the overall thing is there."
"Currently the market is around 1% of the gaming market.
Yeah.
Like as far as I know, it's like $200 million, billion dollars, which is the overall gaming market and $2 billion, which is the VR market."
"With the MetaQuest 2, I think, or MetaQuest 3.
There was a peak with the two and then.
But no, in terms of sales, it's steadily going.
The pace had a little bit slower, become more slower after the COVID end."
"But this is not the overall market.
It is the pace of how it grows.
And this is very promising in general for us.
And this is one of the reasons why we grow because it is still a blue ocean when the market is growing."
"It's potentially it will be growing unless the matrix becomes everywhere.
And at the same time, not very many developers are there.
So we can compete.
The other side is there is no major way to make the exit from the startup because there is no such big players so that the studio can get the venture investments and the venture investors can know how they will exit."
"Exactly.
And Facebook and Meta, they do have the impact on them because mostly, and this is the problem of many developers who start with MetaQuest as a platform, what I see, they don't like how Meta does not try to create the infrastructure like App Store or Steam or Android to keep developers doing their products, but they focus on their MetaHorizon thing."
"And this is the problem.
But at the same time, it's eventually has to be solved somehow.
But in terms of us as a studio, we just do not focus on the Meta as the long term plans.
Yeah."
"But we are using Meta as a tool to do early access with the most easy and technologically possible way because the number of the devices we have to support is very low.
It's like two and a half devices.
MetaQuest 2, MetaQuest 3 and MetaQuest 3S."
"Exactly.
And as a small studio, it is like no differentiation and we do all the experiments there and the player base is very lovely and very friendly.
Yeah."
"It's the best way to do early access.
Yeah.
And then we go to Steam, we go to consoles.
And by the way, we are in the search of console publishers here on the DevGov and we started the negotiations so that eventually the project is multi-platform."
"It is both VR and flat.
And flat.
All right.
Fantastic.
So it's available on Early Access already?
Yes."
"At the MetaQuest store?
Yeah.
Download the game on MetaQuest store.
You can try out and go on a dark trip.
So thank you so much for your time, Alex."
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