David Brickley - Curse: The Eye of Isis

Asylum Entertainment speak to Ferrago on their latest...

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Asylum are about to unveil their latest title to the world, the impressive "Curse: The Eye of Isis", a Victorian-inspired, action-adventure of the the third-person kind. We thought we'd probe their man David Brickley on the topic...

The game looks like it's based around an integral plot, what is this premise, and how is it interwoven with the actual gameplay?

David: Curse: the Eye of Isis is scary on many levels, and a good deal of that is supplied by character development within this initial premise. Obviously I don’t wish to give too much away, but the player will quickly learn that they can’t trust everything they see or are told. Basically, it’s a survival horror title set in the 19th century and begins with the theft of a priceless artefact. The player takes control of an engineer, Darien Dane, and his companion Verity Sutton, a beautiful clairvoyant. Together they must unravel the mystery behind the theft in an adventure that takes them from London to the dramatic and terrifying climax in Egypt.

The period setting allowed us to have a great deal of fun recreating an era not only of great invention but tremendous style. The industrial revolution was in full swing, and the fictional ‘Museum of Great Britain’ setting which opens the game allowed us to get away from the bland, futuristic environments a lot of games seem to opt for, without sacrificing the ability to offer Victorian versions of modern-day machinery and weapons, so we have the best of both worlds.

The course of the game looks to span many settings; tell us about the various environments and how you've recreated them.

David: The team is very proud of the variety on offer. As I mentioned, the museum setting alone offered scope to make each room substantially different from the next, and really make the player feel equal amounts of dread and intrigue about what they’re going to find behind each door without it ever becoming predictable. One stage of the game sees you traversing the ocean on your way to Egypt aboard a truly massive ship – as with the museum, the team went on location to truly understand what buildings and boats of that period felt like, as well as researching and compiling hundreds of pictures for reference.

We want the player to feel as though they really have been on a journey, and as well as the sheer scale of the environments, staging the action across such different continents allowed us to achieve an impressive contrast between the start and climax of the adventure.

What visual trickery will be making the settings of the game come alive, and how will this add atmosphere to the experience?

David: Making the environments impressive in scale was only part of our objective – the next was to make the player question practically everything they see. The beauty of the Curse and its power is that nothing is beyond its reach, so we set out to make the environments ‘come alive’ as much as possible. I mean that quite literally – but I don’t want to spoil too many of the surprises! Like I said earlier, we want to player to think “is this really a good idea?” before performing even the most basic tasks.