The Curfew
The Channel 4 adventure game, The Curfew, that I’ve been producing for the past 12 months with Littleloud is now live and available to play in your web browser for free. It’s been in Beta for a fortnight now, and with all of the big bugs squished, I’m comfortable pointing you guys towards it.
The Curfew is the spiritual successor to Littleloud’s BAFTA-award winning adventure game, Bow Street Runner. It’s been written by my friend Kieron Gillen, commissioned by my friend Alice Taylor, had consultation from my friend Margaret Robertson, and is directed by my friend Darren Garrett. Also a bunch of super talented artists and coders at LL. Isn’t it awesome when you get to make something with/ for your friends?
The Curfew is a game about civil liberties. But it’s also about videogames, immigration, CCTV, police brutality, manipulation of the media and washing dirty windows for small favours. It’s game that uses live actors (including libertarian comedian Mark Thomas doing a worryingly convincing turn as a Fox News-esque anchor), which might make you think it’s a bit like Night Trap.
But it’s actually more like Broken Sword crossed with Big Brother in terms of its systems. It features a dynamic solution that shifts according to how you play the game. There’s no preset ‘right’ answer in the endgame, despite what many players may think from their first play. I hope you enjoy it.
It’s been super hard work. The game clocks in at around 700MB, and finding ways to stream something interactive of that size to you efficiently has been tough. Not to mention the hundreds of man hours of placing actors into CG backgrounds, asset creation, location building, playtesting and the thousand other things that go into even the smallest game. Making videogames is difficult. If I ever write about one of your games, you should know that I do so with at least some understanding of the process. I don’t know if that helps or not.
For those with slow net connection, it looks likely that there will be a downloadable version released in September. So look out for that.
I’m off on holiday for a little now. When I come back, I’ll continue working part-time on Flash games while I focus more fully on my writing. I’ll announce what that means exactly soon, but it makes me happy thinking about it.
Onwards.