30Birds

Factsheet

Developer:
ram ram
Based in Brussels, Belgium

Press / Business contact:
info@30birdsgame.com

Website:
30birdsgame.com

Status:
In development (pre-alpha)

Description

“30 Birds” is an adventure game with visuals like you’ve never seen before in a game. Is it 2D ? Is it 3D ? Who knows ? (look at the GIFs below and tell us !). The universe is unique : the places look like Persian paintings, bursting with colors, patterns and crazy perspectives ! They’re filled with bizarre characters : djinns, humans, magic animals, regular weirdos, and Simurgh, the giant bird Goddess !

A long time ago, Simurgh pinned five gigantic lanterns onto the night sky, before painting the whole city on their sides. But now she’s been asleep for years, while the Lanterns people need her...

Here comes Zig, our mysterious character. She’s here to wake up Simurgh, and for that, she must gather the 30 birds. As she explores the Lanterns on the sound of dub music, she’ll have to make people talk, use her wits and jam with djinns to find all the birds and bring the goddess back.

Features

• Amazing hand-drawn art : each place is a gorgeous scenery inspired by Persian miniatures
• Modern writing connected to ancient tales - infused with humour, nonsense and poetry
• Unexpected original electro dub / ska soundtrack with middle-eastern quirks
• Play music with djinns and they will help you in your quests - find new sounds to use with their instruments
• Add the birds on your last generation Gem-Phone™ chat app - the phone also includes an inventory, a gallery and other secret apps

History

The project started as an art experiment for an exhibition : the goal was to make the audience experience Persian miniature like paintings in a different way, that is, with a gamepad. That's when we came up with the cube layout : Persian miniatures are vertical pictures, it's a defining feature (as they were illustrations for books). Hence, putting them around a cube is the trick we used to make the miniatures connect and expand, while keeping that vertical aspect, and at the same time, introducing a third dimension in the setting. We conceived it as a cross between a kamishibai and a magic lantern projector. These small four-sided paper theaters naturally became lanterns in the game.

Other inspirations include the novel "My name is Red", a magical realist mystery by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, the city of Istanbul, and the character of Simurgh - a famous giant bird from the middle-eastern mythology, similar to Phoenix. The title of the game - “30 Birds” - is a play on words with the name “Simurgh”, which sounds like “thirty birds” in Persian. This has been used by Attar of Nishapur in his mystic poem “The Conference of the Birds”. In this Sufi text, a group of birds led by the Hoopoe goes on a journey to meet Simurgh, who represents God in that context. Thirty of them make it to the ultimate valley to only find a big lake in which they can see their own reflection...

Credits

Coline Sauvand
2D art, game design, story, production

Laurent Toulouse
Game design, programming, writing, music, sound design, production

Sébastien André
Programming

Steph Martin
3D art, additional programming

Antoine Jonniaux
2D art, story, game design

Gilles Tricoire / Manu Larralde
Additional 3D art

Charley Rose
Additional music

Steven Meyer / Pierrot "Pirolf"
Concept, story

Funding

30Birds has received financial support from the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles and the SCAM (society of authors)

Contact

Inquiries
info@30birdsgame.com

Twitter
http://twitter.com/ramramgames

Instagram
http://instagram.com/30.birds

Facebook
http://facebook.com/30birdsvideogame