A Murder Mystery about Raincoat clad killers and Red Seeds...
About the Game
Created by japanese game studio Access Games under direction of Hidetaka Suehiro also known as SWERY 65.
Known as Red Seeds Profile (レッドシーズプロファイル, Reddo Shīzu Purofairu) in Japan.
rocky development...
Deadly Premonition originates from Rainy Woods, a game that Access Games began work on in fall 2004.
In 2008, Suehiro began work on Deadly Premonition, which was intended to be a reboot of Rainy Woods,
combining the assets from Rainy Woods with a new scenario and game design. In March 2009, the project
started, although it would face cancellation four times.
The budget for the overall project, according to Suehiro, was "not very much".
Areas of difficulties in the game's development were memory allocation, various lighting and shadow aspects,
and their use of the physics engine PhysX. According to Wataru Nishide, the lead level artist, and J's
Kataoka,
the lead programmer, the team's data management had been "sloppy" due to their initial amazement at the amount
of RAM that the next-generation consoles provided.
...but a thoughtful labor of love.
Suehiro created a new protagonist, Francis York Morgan, with help from his friends in the United States, and
he
and Kenji Gota, an independent film director, created York's dialogue with his split personality, Zach. As
Gota and
Suehiro are good friends and often have conversations about film, Suehiro tried to imbue the dialogue with
that atmosphere.
Additionally, they wrote the main plotline, while Suehiro wrote eighty percent of the sidequests and all of
York's conversations
with the nonplayer characters. The character Zach was intended to involve the player emotionally in the game
by providing the sense
that York was directly addressing and conversing with the player in his asides.
A central focus of the gameplay is freedom for the player, as Suehiro had wanted to create a game that players
could progress at their
own speed. Suehiro's guiding concepts for the game's setting focused on "real time, real scale, and real
life". The developers traveled
to the United States and noted the width measurements of the various billboards, railroad crossings, and roads
to create a sense of
realism for the town; the angles of the sun and weather patterns were also calculated. To add to that sense of
realism, every street in
Greenvale is named, and an hourly wage was decided on for a local diner. Additionally, the daily schedules of
the non-player characters
were created from their detailed background profiles.
What makes this Game so unique?
What is it about Deadly Premonition that started a Cult Following of passionate Fans?
mixed reception
The gameplay received a range of critical reaction, from competently done for a budget title[4] to horribly
executed.
The gameplay of Deadly Premonition drew comparisons to that of Shenmue and the Clock Tower series while its
combat was compared to
that of Resident Evil 4. According to 1UP's Frank Cifaldi, Deadly Premonition's combination of similar
gameplay to Shenmue,
The Last Express, Resident Evil 4, and the Grand Theft Auto series, proved to be "a 'jack of all trades,
master of none' scenario",
a sentiment that Erik Brudvig of IGN US agreed with. The controls also were criticized as detracting from the
game's appeal.
The combat sections received mixed reactions. IGN UK's Matt Wales wrote that while the combat was simple, the
atmosphere and profiling
worked nicely. According to Eurogamer's Chris Shilling, the sudden appearances of the Raincoat Killer made the
sections frightening and
the profiling made for some unsettling yet "relatively restrained" moments of horror, despite the "over-long
and frequently clumsy"
combat sequences. Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot described the supernatural enemies as not particularly aggressive
and boss battles as taking
too long.
Further criticism was directed at the game's music and visual quality. The graphics were frequently remarked
upon as "terrible" and low
quality. PALGN's Bev Chen, in contrast, felt that the quality of the graphics worked in the game's favor by
adding a "bizarre charm".
Similarly, the game's soundtrack received criticism as sometimes thematically inappropriate, with serious
scenes often containing a
light-hearted jazz track; conversely, some critics found the soundtrack memorable and enjoyable, though
repetitive in its selection.
yet unmistakeably charming
Nevertheless, the game has received a significant cult following. This cult success was attributed to how the
game's "wildly mixed
critical reception and headline-making strangeness got people talking" by Will Herring of GamePro. Citing the
game as an example
of "video games as art", David Jenkins of the Metro praised it for an "emotional range" encompassing survival
horror and comedic farce.
G4TV named it one of the "Top 10 Games of 2010... So Far" in June 2010. The game has received over a dozen
other awards from various
publications, including "Best Cult Game" from Gamasutra, "Most Surprisingly Good Game" from GameSpot, and
"Best Worst Game" from
GamesRadar.
They made a Boardgame!
Inspired by the events and characters of Greenvale, the Deadly Premonition Boardgame is a social
deduction murder mystery for 2-4 players!
description
Deadly Premonition: The Board Game is a detective-themed 2-4 player card-based board game inspired by cult
sensation video game Deadly
Premonition and set in the mysterious town of Greenvale, following the Murder of Anna Graham.
In Deadly Premonition: The Board Game, you and your fellow detectives must take on the task of protecting the
innocent, incriminating
the guilty, and working out who might not be who they say they are. With a hidden killer amongst the
detectives, the race is on to
identify a suspect as an accomplice in order track down the true killer.
