Convict Games have been working hard during the COVID-19 Lockdown to be able to launch their game STONE on Switch in time for M8Day or “Mate Day” (May 8th), which is an unofficial Australian holiday to spread goodwill. STONE is a Hip Hop Stoner Noir Adventure game featuring a private detective that is a Koala and is like a blend of The Big Lebowski and Grim Fandango.
You can find out more in the Official Announcement below as well as a trailer for STONE below.
STONE is a stoner noir adventure story game that follows a loveable, koala private investigator as he pieces together his fragmented memory of the debaucherous night before. As if his morning couldn’t get any more stressful, Stone receives an ominous call threatening to upheave his entire life, just as he realizes his “chookie” Alex, a lorikeet raver and artist, is nowhere to be found.
STONE unfolds as an interactive adventure game story featuring an eccentric cast of anthropomorphic characters and absolutely no frustratingly flow-killing esoteric puzzles . As Stone stumbles through Oldtown, a place teeming with bars, clubs, theaters and more, players can take a “Hard-Ass” or “Soft Touch” approach while interrogating a menagerie of talking animals with bad attitudes and a deep repertoire of Australian slang as he tries to understand what the heck happened last night.
“STONE is an interactive story I’ve always wanted to tell and play. I wrote, direct, programmed, funded and produced the entire project, and it feels incredibly liberating to break free and to release STONE completely independently.” said writer, director and Chief Convict Greg Louden of Convict Games.
Players can give Stone a much-needed break during his journey by engaging with side activities including dancing to brick-in-a-washing machine techno, drinking beer or cocktails, making beats, taking a smoke break and even watching some public domain classic films.
“STONE may not be for everyone, but we hope it’s wild, artistic nature, and Australian influences resonate with those craving a narrative unafraid to ‘go there,’” said Louden. “For STONE, we’ve been tapping into the influential works of counterculture icons including Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas Pynchon, classic stoner noir films such as The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice, and other narrative-driven games including Firewatch and Grim Fandango.”
Music is also a huge inspiration for the Convict Games team, and STONE’s heavily-curated soundtrack features licensed tracks from several upcoming indie artists around the world. Each song was chosen to reflect the myriad moods in STONE’s story and explores diverse genres such as hip-hop, stoner metal, techno, house and more.
Who is Convict Games?
Convict Games is a collection of artists, developers and coders who previously worked on Control, Quantum Break, Gravity, Prometheus, WWZ and more. Convict Games has been “breaking free since 2017” with its small but passionate remote team of highly-experienced developers willing to risk everything to create a game like STONE. Founded on July 5 2017 by Sarah and Gregory Louden. The studio is led by Gregory Louden, an Australian writer and director living in Finland who is so committed to STONE that he created, coded and funded his own company after no other publishers would take a risk on his project.
The team boasts over 10 years of combined experience in the gaming and entertainment industries, with contributions to popular games such as Quantum Break, Control, Downward Spiral: Horus Station and films including Gravity, World War Z, Sucker Punch and Prometheus.
Source: Convict Games PR
