The Twilight Zone Game Announced 2012
 

A new Twilight Zone game has been announced from Legacy Interactive based on the original series and featuring Rod Serling. We spoke to the producer Jamar Graham at our site The Twilight Zone Network recently and you can read that interview HERE.

So we don't know much yet, but I like the sound of it so far. Any thoughts?

Sounds really interesting - should be a worthwhile purchase for those who know (or think they know!) The Twilight Zone inside out.

I'd like to find out more.

As I said on the website, it's good to see a new Twilight Zone game, but I question the choice of putting it on PC. It's not as popular as it once was for gaming and more often that not you need a brand spanking new one just to be able to run it.

Depending on the spec, I may not be able to run it on my laptop!

Sounds fun. It'll be interesting to see it on PC.....since I don't have an X-Box or Playstation.

Get with the yoof, old man!




:D

:lol: I was down at a friends in Stoke at the weekend and I couldn't even play Guitar Hero......unless I used the controller. :pound:

:lol:

Were you any good?

I review video games for a living, so as a huge TZ fan I'm very interested to see what this one's like. I hope it genuinely pays tribute to the series and isn't just a weird "find the object" game with the Twilight Zone name slapped on it.

Oddly enough, I think that is how the game will work for the best - a point and click adventure. Being the type of series The Twilight Zone is, no other genre of game would fit the mould.

I wouldn't mind it being that as long as it made references to the series in some way. It would be great to visit locations from famous episodes and solve puzzles there, rather than have some generic puzzles while the Twilight Zone theme plays every now and then.

Still, I remain hopeful.

Perhaps a Silent Hill-esque game could work. Walking through the various sets and locations as well as interacting with characters in a spooky atmosphere could be excellent.

Going out on a whim here, but an awesome story for the game would be to take it post-modern. Open with a guy falling asleep on a couch watching the Twilight Zone then BOOM, he's zapped into the TV and he's now walking through the fifth dimension.

Just spitballing ideas!

There's some nice concept art over at the production blog now: News – 4 New pieces of concept art! | Twilight Zone Game

That's a great idea as there could be some degree of 'problem-solving' and then some sort of portal to take you from The Twilight Zone back to the normal world where they'd be a save point and a way of re-entering The Twilight Zone.

Well that has me excited. It looks like it's staying faithful to the look of the original series. They say it'll be in colour by the time the game's released... call me crazy but I hope it stays the way it is. It'll give the game a great art style and make it feel more like an old Twilight Zone episode.

Hi everyone,

I'm Jamar, one of the producers on the Twilight Zone game. Thanks everyone for your excitement about the upcoming game. We're still very early on but I wanted to pop in and respond to some of your great comments. If you have any questions or comments about the game then go ahead and post it here and I'll respond. Oh, you can also read updates (and my occasional musing) at the official blog.

"As I said on the website, it's good to see a new Twilight Zone game, but I question the choice of putting it on PC. It's not as popular as it once was for gaming and more often that not you need a brand spanking new one just to be able to run it.

Depending on the spec, I may not be able to run it on my laptop!"

Since my home personal computer was built in 2002 and can't play most games anymore I understand the fear. But the game is being built to run on as many computers as possible. While we're trying to get the best art style as possible we definitely won't be pushing processing speed or any super fancy lighting effects. If you're PC or Mac was bought in the last 10 or so years you should be fine.

And actually the PC and Mac has seen a huge resurgence in casual gaming. Genres that were considered niche before, like point and click adventures, are very popular again. A large part of the resurgence has been games catering more to the average person and not just the super gamer. To me the really cool and innovative games are coming out on the computer and tablets, not the consoles.

"Oddly enough, I think that is how the game will work for the best - a point and click adventure. Being the type of series The Twilight Zone is, no other genre of game would fit the mould."

Exactly why we're making the game a light adventure. We actually tried to think of other game genres and none of them felt quite right (though check out the Twilight Zone pinball game, it's really good). Light Adventure works well because it really allows us to focus on story as well as gameplay.

"I wouldn't mind it being that as long as it made references to the series in some way. It would be great to visit locations from famous episodes and solve puzzles there, rather than have some generic puzzles while the Twilight Zone theme plays every now and then.

Still, I remain hopeful."

Not divulging too much into our internal conversations, but this touches on one of the struggles we've been working on. We want the game to reference the Twilight Zone as much as possible. However, early on we made the decision to go with original stories instead of retelling the classic episodes. The reason why was because if we took a great episode, like Eye of the Beholder, and tried to make it a game then we would automatically tell a weaker story than the original. Eye of the Beholder was written specifically for the television and would have to be distorted to work as a game story. So we're creating stories made specifically to be told through the game medium. We think that'll make the game feel much more immersive and natural. So we're still looking for nods to the fans but not to the point where it takes away from the story.

"Perhaps a Silent Hill-esque game could work. Walking through the various sets and locations as well as interacting with characters in a spooky atmosphere could be excellent.

Going out on a whim here, but an awesome story for the game would be to take it post-modern. Open with a guy falling asleep on a couch watching the Twilight Zone then BOOM, he's zapped into the TV and he's now walking through the fifth dimension.

Just spitballing ideas!"

...have you been in our meetings? I won't tell you exactly how close you are but you're hitting the general idea.

"Well that has me excited. It looks like it's staying faithful to the look of the original series. They say it'll be in colour by the time the game's released... call me crazy but I hope it stays the way it is. It'll give the game a great art style and make it feel more like an old Twilight Zone episode."

We know we don't want to make the whole game b&w (there's legitimate game design concerns) but we do like the black and white aesthetic. We're still trying to implement b&w wherever possible.

Thanks for the comments Jamar! It's nice to see the game's being developed by people who at least respect the original series. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with :)

Thanks for dropping by the forum Jamar, great to be able to talk about the game with one of the guys putting it together. :clap:

Again, thanks for dropping by Jamar. That was a wonderful insight into how that game is progressing. As Scully said, it's good to see it's in the hands of people who care.

Thanks also for looking into some of the questions/thoughts I had on the game - it's nice to know that I wasn't too far off the mark haha! Maybe that career in game writing wasn't as far off as I thought haha!

Look forward to hearing more from you.