AnimalAlbum - Play With Animals

Sjors Jansen, who has formerly worked on Deus Ex 3 and the last couple of Tomb Raider games has started his own company to develop an educational type of game, name AnimalAlbum

So with that I'd like to introduce you to AnimalAlbum, which provides this:

• Adventure game, as in talking, actively thinking about connections between characters.
• JRPG in general look and feel, exploring a world, searching for animals.
• Different sort of battles/encounters. It's about what you know. Encounters are not mandatory.
• Real animals, real data, real knowledge.
• Jump in, jump out co-op play. One player is the leader (child), other is the follower (mum or dad for example).

He is trying to achieve the following with his game:

What I'm actually trying to achieve is getting people to take more interest in the creatures of the world we're living in. You can see the game as a Pokemon of sorts with real animals.
Part of the motivation behind it ties back to a letter printed in science magazine by a group of conservationists who were basically surprised to find that kids knew more Pokemon than actual real animals, calling out to the community to take heed of that.

I haven't really seen much come out of that except a "print yourself" trading card game, and I can't expect the game industry to jump on this since you'd automatically be dealing with the "educational game" stigma. But I feel it's something that needs to be done. So I'm creating this really laid back game that mostly tries to be kind and lets you do your thing. I mean, how many kind games do you know besides earthbound?
I'm hoping the idea will start brewing in the minds of the general public, because videogames still need to show that they can be useful on a large scale. And AnimalAlbum could potentially grow into a series that would ideally cover all of the animals on this blue ball of ours. So I'm hoping for your support.

The game has an estimated release date of early 2015 and is scheduled to be released on PC at a retial price of $12. You can find more information on his website.

I don't think I'll be following this actively, but thought I mention it here as it has some RPG elements and the guy is Dutch

More information.

JRPG?
Um… JRPG = endless respawns, right?

How about adding dodo species in the game and teach kids that there is a consequence for uncontrolled killing.
If that'll be in the game, I'll support it. If not, that game doesn't deserve to be called educational and I wish it fails.

JRPG? No, thanks

Hi Myrthos, thanks for the mention!

Didn't notice it until just now
I can't promise I'll be very active on the forums because I'm busy making the game obviously, but I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Small correction to start out with, I haven't started a company, that's for when you're out to make money. Which is nice of course but I prefer to look at it as a craftsman doing his thing. If is becomes a necessity, sure, then I'll start a company, but I prefer staying as lean & mean as possible.

I also saw you like Planescape Torment, I do too, mostly because of the non combat options, xp rewards for conversations. Which are some of the things I'm basing my game around as well.
Torment did still break the immersion for me though.. It's a long time ago but there was this underground church of zombies and ghouls with this one traitor guy who turned into a wererat early on. And when you confront him and he goes RAARGH! and comes after you and you then run away back to the group with him on your heels, then all the others pretend like nothing is happening. "Hey, how's it hangin'" more or less
So the limitations broke through a bit and that was a shame. But I'm just one guy, so instead of saying sure I can do better then their entire team, I'm hoping to avoid those sorts of issues a bit by making the conversation system more like the shadowrun game on the snes. Keyword based. And I filter out superfluous keywords so you don't get all the canned "Well, I don't know anything about that" responses that you also typically get from adventure games.



Joxer & Gandalf.nho,
it's completely ok to dislike JRPG's of course. Personally the endless braindead random encounters always frustrate me. I don't like grinding and tend to finish games with relatively low character levels. Sometimes, like with FFX's endboss I just don't want to power level for that one fight and I'll go watch his demise on youtube.

So with that in mind, AnimalAlbum is part JRPG by look and feel, and by how you explore the world and such. All the things that personally irritate me I'm of course not putting in. So no mandatory random encounters for instance.
It's not easy to describe a game that doesn't really fit in existing genres. Yet it will be looked at in those terms, so I tried describing in what way the game is like those genres.
AnimalAlbum is something different and I think the best way to describe it is as a mixup of a JRPG and traditional adventure game. If you think Pokemon more focused on conversations and stuff and less with the battling, that might be getting close.
I've just updated the website with a little snippet about the heart system for instance, which is about identifying how characters in the world are related, what connections there exist.
I'll update more on these sorts of things and show how the conversation system works in the future, it's mostly a matter time. There's an RSS feed as well.



Joxer,
regarding Dodo's well.. they're dead. And gone. How about if I focus on animals that are on the brink of extinction right now?
Like the Saola (Asian unicorn) or the Andean mountain cat.

I'm working with the IUCN who manage the red list of threatened animals to make sure the data reflects how bad (or good) it's looking in the world right now.
The game isn't a happy go lucky tale of saving the world or something. It's a little bit sad, and a little bit kind, which I'm hoping comes across. But I don't want the game to be preachy about it and shove horrible facts in the player's face all the time.
But if a player wants to know why some animals probably won't be around much longer they can find out.

Originally Posted by Sjors
Joxer…
… if a player wants to know why some animals probably won't be around much longer they can find out.

You've just sold one copy of the game.

I've released a demo!
http://dromedarydreams.com/index/demo/0-8

And I've also started a crowdfunding campaign:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects…85/animalalbum

Please spread the word if you like it!

I guess the question now is:
An african or european swallow?