“Our main feature is to focus the efforts for new products on meticulous market research, with the goal to identify one or more gender niches in which a good level of innovation is still possible and representative of a high quality of reception by their own catchment area “. Speaking is David Gallo, CEO and Managing Director of Centounopercento and One-O-One Games.
Centounopercento is a nationwide innovation hub that combines multidisciplinary professionals with cutting-edge technologies to create experiences in the virtual world.
The entry into the gaming world of this interesting reality was the foundation of the videogame label One-O-One Games in 2015. Centounopercento employs a young and international team of over 60 peopleexplains David Gallo: “Curiosity, agility, team spirit are the key ingredients that pave the way for innovation through creative and technological competence”.
After the publication of the interesting and controversial The Suicide of Rachel Foster, One-O-One is engaged in the development of Aftermath, a survival video game with great ambitions. “At first we knew we wanted to work on some survival genre with horror elements, set in a city overrun by an alien force and, of course, strongly guided by the narrative “.
After having defined some key elements such as the protagonist and her personal tragedy, Gallo continues: “We have prepared a proof of concept video di 5 minuti which represented the game in its essential characteristics, especially the survival component and the context of setting and narrative. The reaction of the publishers was positive and it was not difficult to reach the signing with a production and marketing budget adequate to the project objective ”.
Aftermath is a horror-hued survival set in a European city devastated by the arrival of a mysterious inverted pyramid that towers motionless in the sky: the Artifact. The player has to take care of both the body and the mind of Charlie, the protagonist engaged in the search for her daughter, David Gallo tells us: “Above all considering Charlie’s disabilitycaused by the loss of her left forearm due to an aerospace accident and the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome which devastated her life and career ”.
Navigating the broken and displaced environment in every direction is as important as bending it through technology to your own desires. As is exploiting Charlie’s knowledge to deceive the alien hunter who pursues her and, at the right moment, attempting to attack him, Gallo continues: “Charlie is not a warriorbut in an attempt to defend himself he is able to use and modify weapons of various kinds, making them increasingly suitable to face the dangers generated by the arrival of the Artifact, omnipresent and always listening “.
To help Charlie, in Aftermath, there will be a dual crafting system for the creation and modification of objects: “On the one hand there will be a standard crafting, which allows the protagonist to build a series of basic and low-tech tools. On the other we talk about engineering, which requires design ideas that Charlie can find or imagine, using his engineering background. To carry out these projects he needs Travis-01, a support unit for astronauts that is very clumsy to move on the ground, but equipped with various equipment, including a very high density 3D printer, which make it a portable workbench ”.
Starting from an assumption of extreme plausibilitythe studio has tried to justify every aspect of the game, including the scientific one, continues Gallo: “Charlie will be able to understand alien technology and exploit it, to the point of evolving it into something new that will give unexpected results in terms of planning and tools to be created and used in one’s favor during the narrative arc “.
Storytelling is the key approach to the One-O-One video gamein Aftermath allowed him to introduce themes dear to lovers of sociological science fiction, using the story of a single person to tell the human condition in the face of destructive events on a universal scale. David Gallo tells us: “The narrative is linear in a non-linear context. The player has no primary or secondary missions, but Charlie’s own objectives and objectives, not necessarily coincident, that emerge naturally during the game experience. In Aftermath religion, human precariousness and existentialist themes merge with the horror of the incomprehensible in the background of a story which at the base is that of a mother in a desperate attempt to find a daughter she has somehow abandoned”.
To give substance to the plot, each element has been weighted as an allegory of a narrative context suitable both for those who are more interested in sociological themes, and for those who want to experience an intense adventure, focusing on the world and on the progression of the character, from an inconsistent particle to determining variable of the story.
Aftermath it is a demanding project, both in terms of budget and development, Gallo tells us: “The game has a budget that can support ambitions, although limits are always an element with which one must necessarily confront in terms of production. The goal remains to maintain the vision and editorial consistency of the product, knowing how to set up the project to make it capable of withstanding changes, cuts, expansions and rework without excessively affecting costs and times “. David Gallo concludes: “In general, developing video games means solving problems and accepting compromises on a daily basis ”.
The production of Aftermath has evolved over time, allowing to structure proposals with the entry of various investors, expanding the scope of the project that does not yet have a release date, but it is known that it will be available for both PC and console.