80 Days is an adventure that spans the entire globe. There are hundreds of routes to choose from. But won't that mean players only see a tiny proportion of the content?
Like everything we've done so far, 80 Days takes existing ideas and pushes them a little further. Last year, when we were developing the first part of our Sorcery! series we made the discovery that pinning an interactive, choice-based story onto a map gave it an amazing sense of breadth, openness and exploration. With Frankenstein - which had no such visual map - the number one question we were asked was, "Do my choices make any difference?" With Sorcery, it was "how many different ways are there to explore?"
But that breadth of content also made for a game that was very wide, at the cost of making a game that was long and a lot of reviews complained about this. Our response was to make Sorcery! 2 about four times bigger - but also, to build a mechanic into that game to help players see more of that content. (No spoilers! You want to know what that mechanic is then play the game.)
Replayable interactive fiction
For 80 Days we're developing that approach further. We want to make a game that you don't play once, but can play and replay several times, and will always have more to offer you. Mixing authored content with randomised elements, every game will be a bit different, with new secrets to discover and short-cuts to take.
What might be a profitable route on one journey could be disastrous on the next - so every time you travel, you'll need to pay close attention to the hints and clues you can learn from the people you meet about which way to go.
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