I’m excited to announce that 39 Days to Mars will be coming to Xbox One in 2019!
39 Days to Mars is a co-operative steampunk puzzle-adventure game, that’s been designed from the very start to support two people playing together. You step into the shoes of Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honourable Clarence Baxter, 19th-century explorers who have chosen to pilot the HMS Fearful on its maiden voyage to Mars. You have to work together on the problems that arise to keep the two hapless engineers alive and prevent the ship from falling apart around them.
At the core of the game are the puzzles. Over the four-year development cycle, each of the puzzles was carefully designed, implemented, and tested to be both fun and achievable. Throughout the development, I carried out hundreds of hours of playtesting to make sure the puzzles are not too hard, and also not too easy! One of the key parts of 39 Days to Mars is that it’s an experience that challenges you, but draws you along with it. It’s not a game that leaves you feeling frustrated.
The puzzles themselves cover a wide range of styles – from absurd physics to logic, and faster-paced action. There is a single-player mode where you can play it solo, but it really shines when you play it with a friend or your partner. As a developer, my main goal for the game was to have a full-length story that you could play together, and I think this is reflected in the fact that each puzzle needs teamwork and cooperation to finish.
The story follows Albert and Baxter, two British explorers and inventors who are building their own spaceship and are hoping to be the first people to land on Mars. Unfortunately, they’re not very good inventors, and everything that can go wrong goes wrong.
It was inspired in part by my love of old sci-fi and adventure books. I’m an avid reader, and everything from classic books to childhood favorites – Jules Verne, Asimov, Norman Hunter – gave the background for the two intrepid but slightly incompetent characters. The setting and art style came from a mix of engineering drawings & architectural plans from the time and the crazy inventions of illustrators such as W. Heath Robinson and Quentin Blake.
Everything in the game is hand drawn in the style of sketchbooks and engineering drawings and uses a sepia color palette. I’ve tried to keep the sound, the voice actors, and even the music in line with this style, to give you a relaxing and peaceful atmosphere for solving the puzzles.
I hope that you enjoy playing 39 Days to Mars when it releases in 2019! For more details and the latest news, visit the official website at www.ItsAnecdotal.com
See the rest of the story on Xbox Wire
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