Although it's still early days production-wise, we at Carpe Diem have already worked out some of the basic game specifics for Conundrum, such as the approximate number of level that will be in the game, and some key game concepts; these are listed below.
Our intention is for Conundrum to have between 11-16 levels (i.e. the titular library would have between 10-15 levels); it is our intention for every block of 100 dewey decimal numbers (i.e. 000-099, 100-199, etc), to have it's own level, with the potential for fiction books to occupy one or more levels, as well as having a bookless ground floor introductory level.
Although not all key game concepts have been decided upon, some have already been set in stone. One such of these key concepts, is that there will be no killing whatsoever in Conundrum. This lack of killing is not because, the main character, Cody, and his archenemy, Rasputin, don't want to kill each other - they do, and this will be made plainly evident within the game - but because they can't kill each other. Players will discover, that the library is in a state of temporal grace (i.e. no-one can injure any-one else), meaning bullets, swords, knives, and other instruments of harm bounce off characters, and do no damage at all. The lack of physical agression prevents the characters in the game, from using physical force to overcome each other, thus meaning they have to use their wits and cunning to succeed; we belive this will come as a refreshing change, to a video game market, where games in which the physically powerful rather than the mentally powerful succeed, are in over abundance.
The other major game concept that has been decided upon at this early stage, relates to the characters players encounter, and become allies or enemies with. Apart from Rasputin, and one other character (at this stage psychiatrist Sigmund Freud), every other character encountered by players, will be a figure from history, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the premise being that the reason they disappeared, was that they wandered into a time portal, that brought them to the library. Whether these time portals are random and accidental, or designed by a higher force, has not yet been decided. Our preliminary list of historical figures that could be encounted in Conundrum, is wide and varied including musicians, explorers, a pirate, and an anchient warrior. Apart from the historical figure that players would meet in the opening level, all other historical figures (including Rasputin, and Sigmund Freud) would be first encountered on the level of the library where a book about them, would be located (e.g. Amelia Earhart would be encountered on level 8, where you would find books on avation, and Roald Amundsen would be encountered on the level 11, where books on Arctic and Antarctic explorers would be located).
Those are some of the main game specifics, we have decided upon so far; more specifics will be revealed, as game production continues, and stay tuned for the screenshots of our first game model (a book), which will be posted this week.
