Hello everyone! I’m here today to post some info about the sound design of Qasir al-Wasat.
The concept behind Qasir soundscape came mainly from a perception trait of it’s protagonist. It is not from this realm, and thus have a tenuous distancing posture that brings a layered perception based on its opinions/view of this realm. This generated a scale: things of its realm are less abstract than our objects that are less abstract than our animals that are less abstract than humans. Unfortunately, animals had to wait due to scope limiting and they are planned to appear only in a eventual Qasir sequel. Everything that appears on the game is put somewhere in such scale of meaning before producing it.
Objects have a blend of normal and reverse sounds, animals would be reversed with a strong filter, and humans are so abstract that the they lose completely it’s reference. Every sound emitted by them are heard as a musical note (thanks to Prokofiev and the first animation sound designers). But it is not music itself, as it lacks several attributes. However, one attribute not missing is that every note is under a specific scale, strongly referenced to the Arabic Maqam, an ethnical “”melodic mode”" from traditional arabic music based on improvisation. Also, each distinct kind of human has its own instrument, all of them chosen to better represent the feel of the ambience of the game.
One of the biggest issues we had during the audio development of the game is that everything was… empty, dull empty. We did want to create an eerie atmosphere and work with the solitude of the protagonist in a not so comfortable zone, but… it got too dull. Fortunately, two masterpieces got into my hand (or.. ear =). One was the indie game Limbo and the other was Tarkovski’s movie Stalker. Both of them has a very similar approach to soundtrack, as they don’t really work with music in the common sense. But they create GREAT atmosphere with sound only, and we adapted several aspects according to what we have learned with them.
Wanna check it out how things are now? Download our public demo or pre-order it on Qasir’s website! ;]
You asked for it, now here it is!
Get the Free Demo now at qasir.adugestudio.com/store
Hello everyone.
Well, March was a quick month as we barely saw it pass us by!
But, oh well, it’s April already and where is Qasir al-Wasat? In case nobody noticed, we estimated a late March release for Qasir and yet the game is not released. Turns out that finishing a game is an amazing adventure of finding out that everything is nowhere near finished. So yes, Qasir al-Wasat was nowhere near finished. Ok, it was not that unfinished, but it needed enough polish and finishing touches that would warrant a delay. In the end, we hadno choice but to delay the release of the game in order to give it those finishing touches and features and give us a reasonable time for that final bugfixing and polishing work.
The new release date is up in the air, but it is not because we have no idea of when we are going to finish the game (we do), but because we are studying the best time-frame to release it. If you don’t live under a rock, you know that there is a huge game release looming and we are kind of not wanting to release Qasir on the same week as that behemoth. And yes, this means we have a May release date, just not the exact day pinned down yet.
That said, here is some updates on how Qasir is shaping up as March was a handful of hard work and progress with development. In these past few weeks we actually finished the two major features that was missing from the game, which were both mini-game puzzles we designed to add to the stealth action-adventure core mechanics. Also, we deepened the efficiency of the investigation mechanic, with a new section on the menu where the player can review every bit of important info he gathered during play. We are currently testing all of this, improving and polishing both interface and design of the given features.
Other than that, as of right now, we are polishing the game’s initial scenes and the general presentation.With those two done right, we will have a good enough opening and early game to be able to release a free public demo for everyone that is curious about the game, but don’t want to pre-order it blindly. We are also tweaking the final areas of the game for them to be more engaging, by adding some new challenges and puzzles while at it. The endgame is shaping up very nicely, although it still needs some polishing here and there as our testers pointed out.
Well, that’s it for now! It’s getting there, it’s coming.
See you soon and meanwhile check some screens from our latest build after the break!
Hello again everyone!
Ok. People are curious about Qasir, and when they have questions, it kinds of boil down to the same set of them. So, I’m posting here the most frequent questions we hear about Qasir and their answers.
So, that ‘s it, Frequently Asked Qasir’s Questions, go:
Q: When is Qasir being released?
A: Cross your fingers and it will be by the end of March.
Q: When will there be a free demo available?
A: Quite possibly, a couple of weeks before release.
Q: Are there plans for a Linux version?
A: Unfortunately no, considering we are using Unity as our engine. Using Wine to run it is plausible, but it needs a very beefy setup to run properly. We are talking about a latest generation hi-end VGA and a competent CPU.
Q: The game is too expensive/cheap. Why/how did you settled that $9.99 price tag?
A: By comparing with other niche indie games with a similar approach and evaluating the subjective worth of the entire experience, we found that a $9.99 tag is a fair launch price. Pre-ordering is cheaper, but if you still find it too expensive you can always pirate it. It just means that it will be harder for us to make other games, but we’ll try to manage =].
Q: How long does it take to finish the game?
A: It varies from person to person. We consider it a medium-to-long length game by indie standards. The average player will take around 3 hours to finish it, while a player which likes to explore and try to do everything that is possible could take from 5 to 6 hours to finish a single run. A speedster can waltz through the game in something like two hours. Also, the game has two different endings which makes replaying it at least once very engaging.
Q: What was the inspiration behind the game?
A: The mais inspiration was our own Tsar Project, of course. But the game draws heavily from medieval folklore (especially Persian and Arabic) and renaissance occultism to create its setting. For the tone we started with the idea of Brechtian Theatre and its theory of distancing effect, a thing we had as a goal with Tsar. At the end the tone is much more poetic, something akin to a One Thousand and One Nights poem as our Brechtian techniques simply fell apart after testings and revisions to the game, even though a lot of early ideas remained.
Q: What does Qasir Al-Wasat means?
A: The Palace In Between or The Palace of the Middle in Arabic.
Q: Why a(n) Arabic / Syrian / Middle-Eastern / Goetian theme?
A: Why not? =]
Q: Don’t you worry that a Syrian / Arabian set / name will limit your approach to the Anglosphere public?
A: No. But thanks for your concern.
Q: Shouldn’t you guys be doing a game with Brazilian themes?
A: We could and we will, but not now. Not doing so is not a matter of lack of pride or for being intellectually colonized, it was just our choice. Also, Qasir is a very Brazilian game, as we are Brazilians and it is impossible not to influence our game with our cultural baggage no matter what’s the foreign theme we are drawing from.
Q: Is it going to be translated to Portuguese?
A: Yes! We have plans of “localizing” (funny say localizing when we are localizing the game from English to our native language, but oh well) it shortly after the release, as well as – possibly – to Japanese.
Q: Why didn’t you made the game originally in Portuguese?
A: It was a hard decision, but to deliver the game as early as possible and to the biggest audience we could, we had to go with English as the primary language of the game. The game would definitely had a better writing with an original Portuguese script, but we just couldn’t afford the time it would take to write all the script and then localize it to English.
Q: Considering the character is invisible, don’t you worry it will be difficult for the player to create a connection?
A: This is a very common question that we would like to address carefully. Of course visual appearance is one of the most important traits in a character, specially if you are trying to reach a great number of people. But we are not necessarily interested that the player creates a deep connection with the protagonist (remember that we drew from Brecht at the beginning stages of development and this is one of the decisions that remained). The game has no catharsis, and so it shouldn’t connect with the player, but rather, talk to him, which is an entirely different thing and we believe that an invisible voice does it efficiently. Also… our frail protagonist might not be invisible all the time.
Please feel free to ask any other questions at the comments! =D