Though introduced as a novel concept, Thechineseroom lead designer Dan Pinchbeck has told Eurogamer that the studio will be removing the one-hour time limit feature from their upcoming PS4 indie title, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. It means exactly what you think – you would play and explore for an hour before the game was reset, back to the beginning.
“It’s an artificial conceit that doesn’t necessarily produce a good player experience. [The idea is] probably more suited to an arcade-style game, but not really good for a non-linear story-driven drama.”
Pinchbeck does mention that it still plays an important role in the game, and that it was more exploring other means of story-telling in video games. “How far can you get? How much can you explore? Imagine reading a novel and you’re really into it, and 30 pages before the end someone comes up and takes it out of your hand and goes, ‘I’m afraid that’s it. Your time’s up,’” he said of his original design.
“One of the things we really, really wanted to explore with Rapture was the uniqueness of storytelling in games. So there are things you can do in terms of how the narrative is structured and how the player relates to the structure of that narrative and how time relates to all of that, that you can’t do in another medium. That’s something that’s pure games. We really wanted to explore: what is it we can do with this that no other medium would be able to touch? How do we make this a real ‘game drama’ rather than a drama that just happens to be a on a game machine?”
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is currently slated to arrive in 2014. It will be exclusive to the PS4.