Ceville: An Interview with Christian Wolferstetter of Boxed Dream

By

Looney4Labs

Kalypso Media, the folks who brought us Jack Keane and Agon: The Lost Sword of Toledo, are poised to bring us the inaugural game from Boxed Dream, a third person cartoon adventure named Ceville. Its premise? Despotic King Ceville is driven from his throne by a peasant uprising. In his place, kind Queen Gwendolyn rules. But she is sadly betrayed by a trusted councilor who summons monsters which aid him in his quest to overthrow the crown. In a unique twist, the kingdom’s only hope lies with its deposed King, Ceville. GameBoomers is very happy to have the opportunity to learn more about this game and its makers.

For the Boxed Dream team—how did you all come together? Would you care to introduce yourselves to us?

The core team of Boxed Dreams was founded by three graduates in Computer science who always dreamed of making computer games. Soon after we realized that we were really bad at drawing we found a great artist that joined our main team. Now our team consists of 10 people, all devoted to making Ceville a great game!

What motivated you to make an adventure game?

Adventures are great games if you want to tell an intriguing story. We all loved the famous Lucas Arts' adventures or Simon the Sorcerer etc.

Also, a small, young team doesn't need a million Euro to compete in the the adventure genre. They just need a lot of devotion and idealism and of course, tons of overtime work! :-)

What was the inspiration for the story?

Nearly every game that we have played features some kind of good hero who saves the world, blah blah blah and so on. BORING! We wanted a really evil, sarcastic main character because that would be much more fun! Nearly all of those stereotypical heroes are long and slender, so we made him short and a bit overweight! He's the true anti hero!

I’ve seen two different European release dates on the web. Do you have a concrete date yet? Do you plan a North American release as well? If so, when?

That would be a great question for our publisher! ;-)

I read that gamers can choose to play either as Ceville (the deposed king), Ambrosius (a pretentious knight) or Lily, (an eccentric but gentle village girl). I like the idea that we get to choose. Can we alternate and play all three characters at different times during the same game, or are we locked into one character for the duration?

That depends. Most of the time, you control a team of characters, like in Sam & Max. In other parts of the game, the characters split up and go to different locations. Then you can freely switch between them.

 Will we meet a large group of non-player characters throughout the course of the game?

There are more than 30 characters in the game, so definitely yes!

Will there be an English language version?

The sound recordings will be made in Britain but the voice actors for the English version have yet to be decided.

Would you characterize this game as easy (good for a novice), challenging (good for an experienced player), hair-pullingly difficult, or somewhere in between?

The game starts pretty easy but becomes more difficult over time. I think the later parts of the game are quite challenging, but there are no insanely difficult puzzles. We want everyone to see the end of the game!

Is the game wholly played using a point and click interface, or is the keyboard used also?

To interact with the environment you only need the left and right mouse button. All hot spots become visible if you press the space bar.

Gaming Today calls Ceville an “action-packed romp full of point and click adventure.” Could you explain more about the “action-packed” remark? Are there “twitch” (fast reflex) elements that the gamer will need to execute?  If so, could you give us an idea of how frequently these action elements occur?

Some puzzles in Ceville are time based, i.e. the player has to react within a given time. However, with each failed attempt of the player, the timer will increase. So after about 3 failed attempts even the slowest person should succeed.

What sorts of puzzle challenges will we encounter—sliders, inventory, sound, etc? Are there any arcade or mini-games?

There will be dialogue, inventory combination, time based reaction, slider and sound puzzles in the game. We also tried to integrate mini games but they were less fun than we expected so we erased them.

Thank you so much for taking the time to help us know you and your game better. We’re looking forward to playing Ceville!