Nascent developer Imaginati is working on finishing up their licensed-based cinematic interactive game, Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier. The project is being published by Imaginarium, which is headed up by veteran actor Andy Serkis.
In an exclusive with IGN, founder of Imaginati, Martin Alltimes, explained what the gameplay won’t consist of but lets gamers know what it will consist of, saying…
“There’s no opening and closing drawers, no searching through inventories. It’s all about you making choices that affect relationships with other characters and, in the long term, how those relationships play out, and how the story plays out. It’s a creative risk, but when we talked to everyone on the team, they really believed in it. It would have been very easy for us to copy what had gone before.”
If you think this is starting to sound like a Ninja Theory game, you’re giving them too much credit.
While Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice also aimed to be a “cinematic” experience, and failed to wrought savvy, noteworthy gameplay into its six-hour runtime, it did at least have combat mechanics. You won’t even get that in Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier.
Instead, the game will center around a group of apes attempting to survive the winter while food shortages ravage their numbers. Players won’t be in direct control of any characters, but instead will make predetermined choices that alter the outcome of the story. A six minute gameplay clip below demonstrates just how much you won’t be playing.
Graphically the team is aiming to hit similar fidelity to the War for the Planet of the Apes movies, but it’s obvious they’re a long way off.
Imaginati is hoping to leverage the use of Quantic Dreams’ cinematographer Steve Kniebihly in order to setup preset camera shots throughout the game, so that the fixed-focus framing will allow for higher optimization and higher visual fidelity as opposed to free-moving cameras like in most games.
Technically, Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier will be even less of a game than the average walking simulator, which is a serious achievement for gaming without gameplay.
In away, I suppose we could compare it to a visual novel, except the length of Last Frontier will only extend to about three hours. The developers are hoping for multiple playthroughs, however.
Given its short length and lack of interactivity, a lot of gamer sin the comment section are rightfully asking if Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier will only cost about as much as a movie given that it offers about the same experience? It’s a good question.
Imaginati’s game is due for release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One this fall.
