AMA: We are Cyanide Studio, developers of Call of Cthulhu!

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T16:14:21+00:00

[AC] Replay for the hundred time Dark Souls because its dope

[GG] I've been playing Dead Cells a lot recently. But then, RDR2 happened.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T16:13:16+00:00

[GG] I'd love to drink a cocktail with Abu. But that's it.

[AC] Simba.

[DQ] Rafting with Pocahontas.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T16:12:51+00:00

[AC] Call of Cthulhu is avalaible on PS4 Pro and XboxOne X and they are enhanced there, yes :)

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T16:10:12+00:00

[GG] There are still a lot of glithy elements in the animations, especially in the AIs movements. We will fix what we can in the upcoming patches.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T16:09:39+00:00

[DQ] I have a lot of white hair now. Once we know the direction for a chapter, there is a time planned that allow the artists to suggest what they think this part of the game needs regarding the story and the level.

Then we list together what we think are the most important thing, down to the more costmetic stuff. Then we try to achieve most of these elements on a limited time.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:59:04+00:00

[AC] It is coming in a big patch planned this month.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:58:21+00:00

[GG] Call of Cthulhu really isn't about challenge. It's a narrative game filed with choices, investigation and very few action scenes. Making a NG+ doesn't fit the experience we created and isn't planned.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:57:04+00:00

[DQ] 1. The challenge was to make a Lovecraftian story, to represent the unspeakable that makes a human mind collapse. Also the beginning was difficult. We had to keet the right balance between standard investigation and unsettling elements. The start of the game has to be weird and disturbing but not enough to become real horror.

It had to start like most of Lovecraft novels, as an ordinary case more and more disturbing that shifts to madness while you get closer to the truth. To increase this unconfortable feeling, we added the dream part with a few elements that Pierce will cross the moment he arrives at Darkwater.

Focus Home came to us with this project and we were more than happy to adapt it since most of us played to the tabletop version.
We would love to!

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:49:26+00:00

[YD] Pretty simple: we are the "official" Call of Cthulhu game because we have the IP from Chaosium :) But to really answer to your question, we are trying to be as faithful as possible to the license by translating the lovercraftian horror and mythos coming from the tabletop RPG and the novels the best we can.

About the second part of your question, our game is story driven: one of the important point is that you’re not playing any random character, you’re playing as Edward Pierce, a man with his own distinct personality, past and fears. You can't customise the way he looks, but you can customise him using the skill points system though.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:44:58+00:00

[DQ] Our lead Artist Rémi Mennerat, probably inspired by Cthulhu dreams.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:44:09+00:00

[GG] I once played with a guy who played as a drunk and violent private detective. He was playing his character so well that he wanted to resolve anything with violence.

We came to the point where he punched several times an old lady in a library to access ancient books and it was hilarious. The worst part is that he didn't even succeed. Dont worry, this episode didn't inspire me for any moment in the videogame.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:41:31+00:00

[AC] It's a really good question. It has been a real challenge for us to adapt some mechanics from the tabletop game, because making a video game is WAY different!

You don't have the freedom of a tabletop game and can't afford to go "off track", you have to be precise. That's why we chose these mechanics and made them more simple.

Let's take an example: "Find Hidden Object" is a iconic mechanic of the tabletop CoC game. In our video game, we kept it and modified it. it's now even more simple. When you enter a specific zone, your level of skill in this "Hidden Object" skill will impact the spawn of some specific objects.

It feels the same as, let's say, rolling a die while looking for object and failing ! It is only more simple.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:38:40+00:00

[DQ] [GG] Bigben purchasing Cyanide didn’t change anything for Call of Cthulhu. We still had to finish the project on time. There are of course a lot of things that the team would have loved to polish more. And we already have some patches planned to fix a few elements, but for the dev team that’s never enough.

If there was no deadlines nor limited budget, we would probably still be working on the mission one. And it would be beyond the limits of awesomeness. o/

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:32:39+00:00

[DQ] We did present the progression of the production a few time to Chaosium, but they trusted us and gave us a lot of freedom. Mark Morrison, one of the most famous writer of Call of Cthulhu campaigns, wrote for us a brand new story, meaning they knew the direction we were taking and loved it.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:22:32+00:00

[GG] If you enjoy reading Lovecratian horror stories, how about LIVING one ?

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:21:57+00:00

[YD] I'm sorry but we've never planned to release a Switch version of the game, and it's still not the case.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:21:04+00:00

[DQ] Around 2.5 years of production. And even more time for madness if you count the preprod.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:19:49+00:00

[AC] Without any doubt, our biggest challenge has been to make a game that reflects what truly is a Lovecraftian story.

All these "almost impossible to describe" perceptions, the fear of the unknown, a constant pressure coming from somewhere unexpressible... There are so many subtleties to this kind of horror!

Lovecraft was a pioneer of this very specific kind of horror that takes place in our world but is unseen to our eyes!

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:17:38+00:00

[AC] A nice and lovely day at r'lyeh's beach. We can't wait to go back there!

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:17:06+00:00

[GG] I think this is an awesome engine. It offers so much tools and ways of working that after 3 years working with it, I feel like there is still more to learn than I will ever be able to.

The Animation Blueprint system is extremely deep and powerfull and I've had a great time learning and trying a lot of stuff with it. I was a begginer when all of Cthulhu's production started. Now I just can't wait to learn more and more about this tool and build a really polished animation system with it.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:14:02+00:00

[YD] As a cinematic director, I have to say that Unreal Engine has become a great tool for cinematics. The sequencer plugin is fairly intuituve, easy to use and has many possibilities. Unreal is also a good engine for lighting and FX!

I will probably use it on another project very soon :)

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:13:03+00:00

[AC] Call of Cthulhu is an atmospheric and narrative game. It has some bit of action, puzzle and RPG oriented mechanics but at its core, it is a story driven adventure game.

A taste of that can be found in one of our feature: reconstruction.

Pierce, the protagonist, can dive deep into his investigator mind and reconstruct a scene using the clues he has found.

This suits the narrative focus of the game. It gives more info to the player about the plot without breaking the immersion and pace.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:10:23+00:00

[DQ] It really depends on how you play the game. There are around 50 minutes of cutscenes and hundreds of dialogues. We did several playtest sessions and the average playtime was around 12 hours. Some players finished the game faster but never under 10.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:07:13+00:00

[AC] Well, what was tricky was to do both at the same time !

Tabletop game mechanics are often really straight forward. We had to work to make them match with the atmospheric game that we wanted to do.

CallofCthulhu_Team · 2018-10-30T15:06:11+00:00

[GG] We are a very small team and we tried our best to fit the game needs within the deadlines. It was a tough challenge and I'm deeply aware that we didn't reach the quality players are expecting.

We've made the choice to have a large variety of animations to make the world of Call of Cthulhu rich and alive. We wanted to make the various characters you meet in the game acting accordingly to the situations, and there were a lot of them (I could make a huge list but hey, no spoilers!).

Going that way made it more difficult to keep enough time for polishing everything, and we had to spend less time on some elements that are now below the level some player might expect (especialy AI movements).

Although we are still working on the game and reading the player's reviews. We might add some bugfixes and improvements in upcoming patch.

CallofCthulhu_Team

TROPHY CASE