After it was announced that Bloober Team team was forming a strategic partnership with Konami last week, now word comes that the Polish developer has received grants from the European Union’s Media Program to produce three new games, codenamed H2O, BLACK & Dum Spiro. Twitter user Bobvids is credited with the first to spot the listings.
According to the European Commission website, the summaries of each game are as follows:
H2O:
The success of Layers of Fear convinced Bloober Team to start work on another game in the series. H2O (working title) will be a hidden horror game that combines a high level of emotions during play and a unique engrossing narrative.
The design team’s core objective is to create a game world that will build upon selected aspects and ideas of the original Layers of Fear. The player will need to survive and discover the story of the main character, and depending on the details the player is able to glimpse during their playthrough, they will decide on the outcome of the story.
Key features:
• An intimate story revolving around a singular, specific character that the player can identify with
• Discovering the layers of the story through multiple playthroughs
• The theme of madness
• An isolated space
BLACK:
Presented in a first-person perspective, the gameplay is a mixture of exploration, survival, and combat. The players take in the world by exploring the environment, interacting with characters, and taking part in story-driven set pieces. As the story progresses, they shape the narrative by making a series of moral choices that will lead to one of at least two endings.
At times, the player engages in visceral hand-to-hand, or melee, combat. Although sparse and sometimes optional, the combat always poses a challenge and builds tension. The hero is constantly outnumbered, or overpowered, and can easily die if he’s not careful. Will you evade your enemies, distract them or face them head-on?
Key features:
• Unique setting with an unconventional blend of the Middle Ages and aliens
• Mature story of the dark aspects of faith and humanity, with the alien lifeform as a catalyst for character development
• Ambiguous moral choices (should we punish those who have wronged us, or stand with them against a greater evil? Should we save a child at the cost of our own life?)
• Mix of stealth and intense, visceral combat (hand-to-hand/melee)
• Historical setting makes the story more realistic and relatable and allows for potential spin-offs set in other historical periods (à la Assassin’s Creed).
Dum Spiro:
Dum Spiro is a first-person horror game, which title comes from a Latin sentence “Dum spiro, spero,” which means “while I breathe, I hope.” It expresses the main theme of the game that even in the face of certain death, people are still capable of deciding about their lives.
The story takes place during 1941-44 in Litzmannstadt Ghetto, a World War II ghetto established for Polish Jews, which was the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe. The player takes the role of an imprisoned boy who struggles against all odds in order to hide and save his little sister. The aim and the main distinguishing feature of the game is the destruction of the so-called “fifth wall” separating the player from the presented history.
Key features:
• Branching plot of the game – the game is divided into 3 acts, at the end of which the player makes a choice in determining which of the episodes he will play next.
• Dilemmas in subsequent acts are chosen based on previous choices
• Smaller and more frequent decisions that do not alter the main events, but affect the state (emotional, mental, physical) of people who are close to the hero
• An extensive system of interpersonal relationships
For additional details on H2O, BLACK & Dum Spiro, you can check out their respective listings on the European Commission website.
At this point, nothing has been officially confirmed by Bloober Team, so we’ll have to wait and see if any of these projects actually come to fruition.
