The recently formed, Northern Ireland-based game development firm Italic Pig is ready to reveal their first project, a 2D puzzle platformer called Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark.
Many members of Italic Pig previously worked on Straandlooper/Telltale’s amazing HECTOR Badge of Carnage series (which I absolutely adored) so despite it being a new studio, there is a good deal of experience to draw from and expectations, or at the very least mine, are fairly high. Now we finally get a glimpse of what they’ve been working on thanks to the game’s Creator/Director (and previous special guest contributor on the site), Kevin Beimers, who sent over loads of great information and a cinematic trailer announcing the game. Kevin was also nice enough to take part in a lengthy Q&A about the game as well.
Based on a cornerstone of quantum theory, Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradox proposed by noted physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, in which a cat is placed inside a radioactive box along with a container of poison. The poison is released, killing the cat, however it is postulated that while sealed within the box, the cat is simultaneously both dead and alive, however, breaking the seal and looking inside the box will reveal either a dead or live cat, but not both. This game focuses on what this (crime-solving) cat is actually doing while no one is looking.
Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark is a 2D platformer-puzzler-punch-up of subatomic proportions. You are Schrödinger’s Cat, Hero of the Quantum Polyverse, tasked with disentangling the chaos that’s recently befallen everyone’s favourite femtoscale family destination: the
Particle Zoo.”
The Particle Zoo is the atom’s answer to Jurassic Park. On a good day, patrons of all sizes can observe free roaming elementary particles of the Standard Model in their natural habitats. Today is not a good day. When Schrödinger’s Cat is called in to sort it out, he needs to get the cantankerous Bosons, the kleptomaniacal Gluons and the ferocious, quarkniverous Leptons back where they belong… not to mention figure out how they all got out of their enclosures in the first place.
The core game play relies on collecting various types of Quarks of which there are 4 common types (Ups, Downs, Tops and Bottoms). Each of these Quarks have special unique properties (Ups carry, Downs drill, Tops protect and Bottoms build) and combining multiple Quarks of the same or differing types will create a variety of items that the cat needs to make his way through certain areas of The Particle Zoo. For instance, “if you need to get out of a hole, three Ups will make a propeller, where three Bottoms will make a solid platform, and two Ups and a Bottom…a rising platform.”
There are also what are called Charm quarks and when these are combined with any of the other quarks they give you a temporary power-up (Up Charm bestows the power of flight).
The game both encourages and rewards exploration as well as completion of certain tasks. “Quarks help you explore hard to reach areas. The more you explore, the more quarks you’ll find. The more you’ll find, the more you can upgrade, and the better those quarks will be when you enter the particle enclosures.”
Part combat-platformer, part logic-puzzler, part open-world explorer, part character-driven adventure, Schrödinger’s Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark fluctuates between several gaming universes to provide a colourful, quirky, quantum-sized adventure.
Check out the cinematic trailer below for a taste of what to expect. If the character voices sound a little familiar, it’s because it is none other than A.J. LoCascio, who also voiced the character of Marty McFly in Telltale’s Back To The Future game series.
If that wasn’t already enough detail, don’t worry, there is even more information on the game’s official website, plus we have a detailed Q & A with Schrödinger’s Cat’s Kevin Beimers Creator/Director on page 2 of this post.
