(The adventure community has been in an uproar since the announcement by Autumn Moon Entertainment, a band of ex-LucasArts employees who all worked on multiple 1990's adventure games, that a great-looking adventure game called A Vampyre Story is under development. At first look, it certainly appears to have all the elements of graphical excellence and charm that made the classic LucasArts games so great. Autumn Moon's representative was kind enough to answer all of our questions about the game. Enjoy!)

Please introduce yourself and your role at Autumn Moon Entertainment.

Hi. I am Mike Kirchoff and I am the Director of Business Development at Autumn Moon Entertainment. I am the acting spokesperson for the company.

How and when was Autumn Moon Entertainment founded?

I founded the company in 2002 and teamed up with a programmer, also from LucasArts, to create a playable proof of concept for the game. We had both enjoyed making adventure games. But with the drop in sales for that genre, it became harder to get assigned to new adventure game projects at LEC. It seemed like the only logical way to be a part of that kind of project again was to create something independently.

Along the way, we recruited more former LucasArts employees, artists mostly, to help make the proof of concept. Sound engineers and composers from other companies joined the effort and professional Bay Area actors were recruited to do the voices. Many of these people will have the opportunity to join the company or continue working as contractors as soon as the game is fully funded. They love the concept and the game and have tirelessly donated their time and their talent to this project. Sometimes money is the motivation to do work. Other times, working on something fun is more important than money. That is the case with AME's A Vampyre Story. It has been a true labor of love.

This proof of concept is a mini-game that won't be part of the final game, but rather a tool to show publishers and investors what the final game will be like.

How was the idea for A Vampyre Story born, and when did development begin?

The story was created way back in the summer of 1995, but the idea to make it a game didn't happen until 2002. It started off as bunch of doodles in a sketch book, and then a story grew from there. Who was this Vampyre? Is she good or bad? Or both? The ideas just flowed from there.

Please summarize the story and primary character for our readers.

The game takes place in Europe around the 1880's during the Victorian era. A young French opera star becomes the object of obsession for a deranged vampire. She is captured by him and turned into a vampire. She must escape his castle and return to Paris to realize her dream of becoming a famous opera star.

You've made the decision to use Virtools, the engine used by Syberia (among other games). What led to this decision? Was Virtools always your choice, or did you begin with a different engine in mind?

We started off with a 2D engine, but quickly discovered that 2D animation production was too slow and would eat up too much of our budget. Also, games like Syberia and Runaway: A Road Adventure came out and showed that point & click 2D/3D hybrids could work both technically and aesthetically. Plus our animator has a lot of experience in 3D animation and works faster in it. It just made more sense. We will even experiment with a celshaded 2D filter to help the characters blend better with the 2D backgrounds.

Who is writing the dialogue and narrative?

The plot and storyline for the game, as well as a lot of the initial dialogue, were fleshed out by the Director. In all, four people have contributed to the final dialogue and game script for our demo. Adventure games can require anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 lines of dialogue. No one person can reasonably write that much quality dialogue, unless of course they happen to be Tim Schafer. We do have a lead writer who creates and fine tunes a lot of the dialogue but it's definitely a group effort. It's a method often used in film and television and comedy writing in general. We brainstorm and feed off each other's ideas usually by saying "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if..." or "What if we added this?" Hopefully, at the end of the day, after kicking around a hundred or so ideas, we end up with at least ten or twenty that are really good. That is how we approach writing, as a team, with a strong visionary to direct the themes and style.

How will dialogue sequences be handled? Will there be SCUMM-style dialogue trees?

We wouldn't have it any other way. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is our motto.



Will you be using any recognizable voice actors (either from Hollywood or from previous LucasArts adventures)?

Probably not, but it's too early to say. We will go out of our way to find good actors to do our voices. Using union voice talent can be expensive and we'll see what our final budget allows for. But if our publishers want us to do that we will. And who knows? Many famous actors love adventure games and might enjoy working on a project like this.

Will the characters in the game be 2D or 3D? Are you using cel shading for the art?

In the proof of concept, which all the screen shots are from, the characters are 2D. But in the final game they will be 3D, and hopefully cel-shaded.

Tell us more about the vampire powers in the game.

There are seven chapters in the game and we plan to add one new vampire power per chapter. They haven't all been decided on but we know the first three will be the power to turn into a bat, the ability to drain blood from a victim (but not too much. Mona doesn't want to kill anybody. Being dead she knows how it feels- not good!), and to be able to influence the weather.

How far into the game are you? You have mentioned a release date of Halloween 2005 previously; do you still feel that's a strong possibility?

It is a weaker possibility as days go by, for sure, but it is still quite possible. We haven't struck a deal with a publisher yet, and full production is contingent on that. As soon as we are fully funded by a publisher, production will begin right away. If we can't make October of 2005, then the Halloween of the following year will be our goal.

(turn the page for more...)