Efter att tidigare ha släppt Last Time I Saw You arbetar Maboroshi Artworks nu med en helt annat idé. Studion lämnar 2D och utforskar i stället 3D i ett förstapersonsspel med fotografi som kärna. Det är onekligen ett stort steg, men det är ett som ligger nära hjärtat för den kreativa ledaren Juan Fandiño, vilket han nyligen förklarade för oss på BCN Game Fest:
"Before working on games, I studied art and photography. I went originally to Japan as a photographer, but ended up working on games. And I always had photography there, like something that I wanted to develop, but I didn't really fully develop, yeah. So in this case, I wanted to unify both things, and try to bring the art or the photography I like into a game."
Han fortsatte med att prata om varför spelet, som hämtar mycket inspiration från Japan, använder ett förstapersonsperspektiv - något som är ovanligt för spel från regionen:
"Because the game is focused on photography, for me it felt more natural to just play in first-person, since you are going to put the camera in your eyes. The transition is seamless. I've seen recently there are several games with third-person, even point down, that you take the camera and then you go into first-person, like for example, Toem, which is one of our references. But in this case, we wanted to make it more seamless, and also, because we are working with a narrative, we are still making a narrative game, so being yourself inside the eyes of the character, I thought that could enhance easier the fact that you can get into the story easier, basically, yeah."
Arbetstiteln är för närvarande Project Blur, men så kommer det inte förbli. Fandiño förklarade:
"So actually, I must say that originally I wanted to call the game Blur, but there's already a racing PS3 game called Blur, so I couldn't go in that direction. There's a band as well, of course. So I kept the codename for that, the title will be different."
Avslutningsvis berättade han också om målsättningen med Project Blur och hur allt kretsar kring konstnärligt uttryck:
"We want to give the player artistic freedom to frame them as they want. What you have to take is what the game is telling you to do, but then you are free to take photos of whatever you want, and you have an album where you collect them, you can delete them, you can keep them, and you can do with them what you want. So yeah, the game asks you to do certain things, but we encourage the player to explore, do whatever they want, and share those photos with other people.
There are some communities online of people that use the photo mode of several big games, and they make really, really beautiful images. Of course, we are not a AAA studio by any means, but we are aiming to make a game that is beautiful enough for people to want to take photos inside that game."
Du kan se hela intervjun med Fandiño, med svenska undertexter, för mer information om Project Blur och Maboroshi Artworks senaste succé, Last Time I Saw You.
