By Jane Jensen

[Intro: Between Gabriel Knight #1 and #2, I wrote a short fictional piece for Sierra’s magazine called Pause that gave players an idea of what the characters were doing between the time frame of the two games. While thinking of a worthy December blog entry, the idea came to mind to write a short story about the characters but I dismissed it at first. Too much work, not enough time. But the idea wouldn’t go away. So here it is. This is the Christmas ‘before’ and Dread Hill House and David lie somewhere ahead in Sam’s future.]

The Spanish Steps, Rome, 2008

The dark‐haired girl with the pale face and black lipstick performed a graceful flourish of her hands. A spray of doves flew into the air. They beat their white wings above the Spanish Steps, somethings which had appeared from nothing and no place. There was a spattering of amazed applause from the few passers by who had caught the movement. But only a couple of coins clinked into the hat.

The crowds that clogged the Spanish Steps and streamed around the fashionable Spagna district in Rome had other things on their minds today. The elegantly‐dressed Italians outnumbered the tourists ten‐to‐one, a rare occurrence, and not a happy one for business. It was still a tradition in Rome for Christmas to come at, well, Christmas time. The city heaved and contracted in a frenzied glut of gift‐buying, bough‐choosing and the selection of delicacies for the Christmas table, as if it had only just dawned on people that tomorrow was December 25th. It was no wonder that people couldn’t spare a moment …

Download the whole story here

This month, Jane has decided to let me introduce you to Gray Matter from the developer’s point of view, so I’ll be your host. I’m Dinga Bakaba, game designer at Wizarbox, the studio responsible for the development, artistic direction, and game design on Gray Matter. As you know if you have been following the game’s history, we have only recently had the opportunity to work on the game.  We really loved what we have discovered, the characters, the story, the setting… And we were more than eager to do our best to improve on what has been done so far. I’ll try to give you guys a glimpse as to what our main philosophy is in developing Gray Matter.

At first, not everybody was aware of the scope of the game, and its other unique characteristics. As every other Jane Jensen game, Gray Matter is a very story and character driven adventure. The puzzles, while good, are not the main focus, they serve the story and are integrated to it, like “that’s exactly what I would do myself in that case” type of puzzles. This might seem obvious for the Gabriel Knights veterans, but the adventure scene have seen over the years many games with a heavy emphasis on puzzles over story.

With this in mind, we decided to go back to the story, and immerse ourselves in Jane’s universe and vision.  The first thing that occurred to us was that Jane was very precise in the kind of feeling and mood she wants: the game is, as she puts it: “Gothic Romantic”. To decode that, we first isolated the different themes in the story and worked on them separately, and then tried to blend it all together harmoniously.

The gothic architecture of the setting, the stage magic imagery, the paranormal/parascience world, the haunted manor, and some other strange and cool themes are explored in the story. And we felt that the existing visual design, while cool, lacked some soul and punch. So we added a dark and mysterious element in most of the backgrounds. We tried to make each and every single one intriguing, unique, beautiful, and worth exploring.

Then there were the characters. As you have read in the preceding word from Jane, she likes to put a lot of polish and care in crafting her characters. For the same reason, we decided to rework a bit of the character’s design to get more expressive, unique, and engaging characters. Take a look at the “before after” character design of Harvey’s (oops, I’m giving hints on last month’s guessing game).

From a game design perspective however, there was not very much to change. We are implementing the gameplay trying to stay very true to the author’s vision. The interface was completely redesigned though, to be consistent with the artistic direction. We see Gray Matter (and video games in general for that matter) as a complete package where all elements blend in to form a fully coherent experience, so we try not to neglect any aspect of the game.

Of course, it is not always “la vie en rose” on Gray Matter. We faced and are still facing a lot of challenges. It is not easy to take over such a high profile game. We are trying to both stay in continuity and to raise the quality of the experience you are about to take part in. Oh, and then there’s one challenge our team has to face, but I can’t talk to you about that just yet… A magician should never reveal his tricks, remember?

Also, the title on the game will say “Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter”. So if you are wondering, yes, it’s her game, it’s her baby, even if we (and other companies) are working on it. She follows the game’s development closely; she takes part in the decisions, and continually shares her creative vision.

I must say that I’m really eager to see how Gray Matter will be received by you: the gamers, both old time fans and newcomers. We have put our hearts in our part of the development, and are very pleased with the first feedback from the artworks. We are following closely your reactions on the forums and on this blog and we really want to deliver a game that you’ll love and remember.

While we’re waiting for the gods to drop upon us a cool playable demo, there’s not a lot to talk about except design. This month, I thought I’d share some new characters with you.  You already know Sam and David.  But are not the only pieces on the Gray Matter gameboard?  Hell no.  In fact, there’s a lively supporting cast.

Supporting characters can be a lot of fun to write.  For one thing, they can be more extreme since they’re applied in smaller doses.  Kind of like pepper in a stew.  They can be totally new, which becomes more relevant as a series progresses.  And they can be an excellent foil against which to test your main character and demonstrate what he or she is made of.

Mysteries often have great ensemble casts.  Think of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” and “Murder on the Orient Express”.  Or, you know, Love Boat.  I modeled my cast in “Gabriel Knight 3:  Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned” on this template.  You have an isolated location, a fixed group of diverse people, and a reason to suspect each one of them.  That’s inherently creepy.

Our “ensemb” in Gray Matter is called The Lamb’s Club.  It’s a group of Oxford students that Sam gathers up to take part in David’s experiments.  When one of the members gloomily dubs them “lambs to slaughter” the name sticks.  But naturally we won’t really slaughter them during the course of the game.  At least, not all of them.

They do, however, all fall under suspicion as Sam is investigating the happenings at Dread Hill House.  There’s gotta be an “inside man”, right?  But they can’t suspect that they’re suspected.  Got it?

The Members of The Lamb’s Club:
(Note:  For full effect, apply organ music stingers to the end of each bio. Thanks.)

Harvey – Harv’s a New Yorker whose father sent him to Harvard to study law, but who really wants to be the next Orson Welles.  He’s the class clown, but not stupid.  Sam can get very little by him.  Is that because he already knows what’s going to happen?

Helena – A European Princess from “some country you never heard of”, Helena is rich and pampered.  She cares about booze and boys, though not in that order.  How she ever got roped into something as pedestrian as this club is a puzzle.  Or did she get roped into it?

Charles – Charles looks like a statue of a Botticelli angel but doesn’t have the confidence to match.  In fact, this self-proclaimed momma’s boy from Manchester seems pathetically nervous around women.  No way, Jose.  Not with a bod like that.  It must be an act.

Angela – Bookish and quiet, Angela is the quintessential college type.  She even has the gentle Scottish brogue to match.  Such a waifish little thing.  Surely she’s harmless, even if she is a few pences shy of a pound when it comes to her interest in fate, angels and the paranormal.

Malik – This Indian neurobiology student seems both compelled and repulsed by the legendary Dr. Styles.  He invited himself to the experiments and is the first one to insist they continue.  Is he a neuro-science fan-boy or the younger gunslinger there to take David down?

The wunderbars artist at Wizarbox made this concept sketch of The Lamb’s Club.  It’s one of my favorite Gray matter concept sketches so far.  Can you tell which character is which?

Dear adventure game community,

I know there are a lot of questions out there about the Gray Matter project, so I wanted to give a status update. We changed developers last year and lost a good 9 months in the process. Yes, that sucks. However, the new dev team, Wizarbox, is a very tight, experienced team. They’re raising the quality bar on the project in a way that’s exciting for me personally. And the commitment to the project, and getting it to market, is absolute from dtp entertainment, the team and myself.

So the bad news is, the game has been delayed. The new team is still working (or reworking) all that infrastructure stuff that means you don’t see characters doing backflips on screen right now. Without something big and visible to show, we did not want to talk about Gray Matter at Leipzig again this year. But the good news is, it IS going to happen and happen well. As soon as we can show you a build, we will.

I totally get that this news is not going to be satisfactory. By now, you want the game IN your hand and that’s the end of it. There’ s nothing we can really do about that except keep working and hope that once we have a game, you’ll love it.

I’m looking into a way to put more regular updates out there myself so that it’s all not quite such a black hole. In the meantime, here’s some cool new concept art from Wizarbox that I hope you’ll like.

Jane Jensen