Interactive cinema game Nazar has debuted as a 2D platformer on Steam with a blend of ancient Turkish history and science fiction.
Set in a magical and fairy-like landscape of Cappadocia, the sci-fi game combines full-motion video and and platforming gameplay, said Eray Dinç and Simay Dinç, a brother-and-sister team, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“This is a global game, primarily in English but also localized for 10 languages,” Eray Dinç said. “We transform the ancient rituals and blend it with science fiction. It is rooted in Middle East/North Africa (MENA) culture, but it’s super global.”
The Dinç siblings have a lot of experience in global mobile game development, as they were the creators of the Recontact full-motion video trilogy of mobile games. Now, joined by musician Inon Zur and a small team, they worked for about 2.5 years years on their new science fiction game. The game is an action-adventure 2D platformer with story-driven full-motion video. It’s targeted at Steam on the PC today and in a few months it is expected to debut on the consoles.
In the title, the players has to use their parapsychological abilities and foresight skills to navigate the game mechanics. A film made entirely of videos provides players with a real 2D platform game experience. You can navigate to your destination with xenon navigation while seeing the future through astral travel in Nazar’s dreams. You have to find the right path and reach the future before your foresight time runs out.
Seeing the future
Astrology, fortune telling, dreams, amulets — these are part of ancient rituals to prevent future evil outcomes, blending ancient culture and science fiction.
The Zener cards, created by Carl Zener in the 1930s to scientifically measure parapsychological
abilities, will also measure gamers’ parapsychological abilities. The more skilled they are at
seeing the future, the more advantages the players will have in the game. In the game, extrasensory
perception is part of the scorecard.
Stopping a devilish cult
The character Nazar used his ability to see the future as a fortune teller in his youth. He later joins the Misal Initiation, an ancient organization in Anatolia. His mentor, Mergen, trains him and makes him an
initiator. However, he forms a new team using quantum technologies to counter the Fatum cult,
which uses future-seeing abilities for evil purposes worldwide.
Nazar ties the fates of those who should not see the future with his abilities and special technologies. When Master Mergen receives news that the leaders of the Fatum cult are gathering in Cappadocia, he has no choice but to call upon his former student, Nazar, to stop this devilish organization. When Nazar arrives in Cappadocia, the Misal initiation assigns him an assistant named Tela. But to stop the Fatum cult’s plans, he must see even deeper into the future.
Origins
The creative vision for the game came from Turkish film director, game designer and academic Eray Dinç. He has won more than 10 international awards for his films and video artworks.
Shot in 2D with the aesthetics of Turkish shadow plays, this production creatively combines cinema and platform game genres.
“In Turkish culture, there is a tradition called the shadow play. I use this technique in the platform game, where we blend the 2D platformer genre with FMV interactive cinema,” Eray Dinç said. “We use the Turkish shadow for movement, based on cinematography. We hope to inspire other game developers too.”
He was also inspired by the cinematic style of movies by Andrei Tarkofsky, like Sacrifice. On top of that, he wanted to use the Anatolian lore in the Turkish region.
“The culture provided my motivation and inspiration,” he said.
Eray Dinç served as the head of the cinema department for four years at the Sadri Alışık Cultural Center. In 2014, Eray Dinç wrote the interactive filmmaking book titled Making Movies Without Money. He and his sister Simay Dinç are the cofounders of Recontact Games, which combines cinema and video games into a new art form through pioneering technologies.
Their first game, Recontact Istanbul, won “The Best Game Award by App Store.” The game was also exhibited in art galleries such as the Pera Museum as an extension of video art and received the Best App award at the Los Angeles New Media Film Festival.
Eray Dinç’s second video game, Eyes of Sky, debuted on platforms as the world’s first cinematographic game and won international awards such as IMGA San Francisco. Dinç is also the co-founder of Kıraarthane, a social impact project providing free new media art design education to village children. He is also an assistant professor at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and Beykent University.
Eray nurtured his students from the university to develop the game, Nazar. The Unity development of Nazar was carried out by Eray Dinç’s students from the Digital Game Design Department of Istanbul Beykent University, where he is the founder and head of game design department. He served as producer, game designer, director, script writer, director of photography, and post production and sound.
Game development challenges
Eray Dinç said that blending interactive cinema with a 2D platform game was one of the biggest challenges, as the team had to manage three distinct production aspects: filmmaking, game development, and the complex phase of combining the two.
Additionally, the actor portraying Nazar ran over 50 kilometers on Cappadocia’s rugged slopes, which the team used as the game’s platform, overcoming many obstacles and even risking injury.
Integrating FMV beyond traditional multiple-choice mechanics and directly into game dynamics posed unique technological hurdles, as game engines often fall short in video processing capabilities. To address this, the team undertook a dedicated R&D project, which became the most demanding process for our software team, Eray Dinç said.
Working with a game composer like Inon Zur was also personally challenging. Eray Dinç had to communicate his vision precisely, and while it was difficult to request revisions, Zur worked back and forth to with Eray Dinç to bring the vision to life. Eray Dinç believes the result is an industry first in terms of combining cinema with 2D platforming elements like puzzles, boss fights, resource management and a rogue-like structure. Simay Dinç served as head of international partnerships.
Turkish mythology
There are many elements from Turkish mythology in the game. But most importantly, it is based on the rituals of preventing the bad future in the region’s geography and the differences between the eastern and western perspectives on these issues, Eray Dinç said.
The name of the main character is Nazar. In Turkish, it means the “evil eye that brings accidents and trouble.” His mission is to eliminate the extra sensory perception (ESP) of those who use their clairvoyant abilities for evil purposes around the world.
Cappadocia is an ancient city in Türkiye famous for its tourism around hot-air balloons. The team filmed the video there and also made an original soundtrack.
The team had Unity developers. But adding the quality assurance team and other artists, a total of 60 people worked on the project.
While Nazar is a part of Recontact Games, it will be released under the roof of the personal studio Eray Dinç Studio.
“The most important reason for this is that we carried out this process with my specially trained students in digital game design at Istanbul Beykent University, where I am the founding head of the department as a faculty member,” Eray Dinç said. “Unity development and QA team completely belongs to my students. In the education system, if a student is not working on a real game project, it means that they are not ready for the industry. That’s why I gathered these students under a single roof in my studio and Nazar was the first project I made with the students I trained with academic support for four years.”
Recontact Games’ trilogy of Recontact Istanbul, Eyes of Sky and Recontact: London reach more than a million gamers in 153 countries.
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