Summary
- Stone is a single-player, third-person interactive story where a hungover koala detective wakes to find his lover Alex has been kidnapped.
- Made by Convict Games, a new team of ex-AAA developers, filmmakers and musicians that have worked on games like Control and Quantum Break and films like “Gravity” and “Prometheus.”
- A passion project, Stone was made to tell a new type of story.
Hey Xbox Wire, nice to meet you all. I’m Greg Louden from Convict Games and I’m here to talk about our debut, Stone. It’s an Aussie LGBT stoner noir interactive story that follows our koala private investigator Stone who wakes to find his lover has been kidnapped. You need to find out what happened.
As I
wrote, we’re an interactive story, so super, super story driven. While playing,
there’s constant reference-filled dialogue like a great hip-hop track and an
eclectic soundtrack. So mechanically in the game you walk, talk, interact,
dance, smoke, and drink. Some call it a Walking Sim; we like to call it an Interactive
Story. We have one ending in Stone, so you don’t change the story with
these choices, but rather you adapt it and make it your own.
To
bring noir to 2019 and Xbox, it had to be hip hop, that to me is also about
wordplay and Stone is filled with references and throwbacks. It’s also a
genre with a set use in games, however we wanted to present it in a different
way and bring my passion for the genre to storytelling in interactive stories.
The
whole koala, anthropomorphic concept came from the fact that it’s a great
metaphor; and in games we need to build everything. So why do we recreate the
real world when we can create something new and something only games or CGI can
do.
Stone is filled with licensed
tracks and public domain cinema. I’m stoked with the selection and I think
people will really enjoy the music and cinema we have available. We have Ryan
Little providing our central hip hop vibe with Ilkka S providing our techno. On
the Aussie side we have Luchii involved along with Grand Oyster Palace, Joseph
Banks and Golden Grove on the Aussie rock front. In terms of cinema some
players will watch some cinema like “Night of the Living Dead” and will be
blown away, because all of these films are masterpieces that are now free for
use.
Convict
Games is a new Aussie remote story game company telling high impact and
alternative stories. We’ve got talent from Moscow, Helsinki, Los Angeles,
Sydney and Melbourne that have worked on our debut Stone. Convict was
founded by my Co-Founder Sarah and I on July 5, 2017 and our motto is “Breaking
free since 2017.” Which means we’re trying to do something fresh with our
stories rather than follow others.
All
of us who have worked on Stone like telling alternative stories. In
games, those types of stories are very rarely played and usually you evade,
attack and shield as mechanics. We wanted to push interactive storytelling
further. Usually there’s the same sort of music too; we wanted to challenge
that as well.
This is Stone and we’re Convict Games.