What is Odysseus? — NFTU #1
Hello there, and welcome to the new Cats From The Underground development blog, News From The Underground.
Hooray! 🎉
Yes, we know the name isn’t very creative, but bear with us, please.
Here, we’re going to give you some news about the development of our latest game, Odysseus.
So, to begin…
Who are we?
I guess we should present ourselves before talking about our project, eh?
Well, there isn’t much to say. We’re just a bunch of guys that decided to group and make games about themes we like.
There are five of us, at the moment. That being:
Carlos (myself), the writer.
Daniel, the game eventer.
Eduardo, the illustrator.
Emanuel, the map designer (and also an illustrator).
And Elvis, the composer.
Together we form the Cats From The Underground. The name is a homage to Notes From The Underground, a book by renowned Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Our goal is to make games that can evoke feelings, and make people think about aspects of their lives.
What is Odysseus?
Odysseus is a narrative-driven, point-and-click, and utterly poetic adventure game that was initially going to be a 10-minute demo of a game called “Raziel” (now named Nelyubov). The gameplay revolves around exploration, item-collecting, and information-gathering to complete objectives given to the player by NPCs.
The inspirations for the game story and atmosphere are vast but mostly come from Russian and Romanian culture.
Initially, the game engine of choice was RPG Maker 2000, but it was recently changed to RPG Maker MZ.
The themes of the game are mostly spiritual, metaphysical, and psychological. Since the main protagonist, The Pilgrim, is an Orthodox Christian, one of our goals is to depict his struggle with his faith, and it’s also one of the reasons why he decides to take on this pilgrimage.
The game also deals heavily with the aspects of introspection, loneliness, the alienation of everyday society, religious persecution, nostalgia for a past that no longer exists, existentialism, and the problems of human connection.
Alright, but what is the premise?
The premise goes as follows:
Taking place in the 60s in the middle of a harsh winter, a homesick, tired, and moribund orthodox pilgrim wanders through an alienating and indifferent world, where hope for better days became a distant memory. He is in a constant struggle with his faith and trying to find meaning in his life.
He is now on his way to a foreign city. There, he hopes to find odd jobs to collect money to maintain himself and continue traveling.
While there, he will find all sorts of sad, broken people which he’ll meet and probably try to help in any way he can.
And when it’s coming out?
To be quite honest, we gave up trying to answer that. We are a very small team with members who don’t have enough time to focus solely on the game. We wished to be in better situations, but it is what it is.
Furthermore, we’re going to try our best either way, and we hope that you’ll be there to see the project finished.
And that’s the end of this issue!
We hope you liked it. This is just a little introduction to who we are and what the project is since some of you probably had some questions as to what those pretty images on our Twitter feed are.
We’re going to post more details about the game soon, so please look forward to it!
See you guys soon. Hopefully.
