Two former developers from CD Projekt RED's The Witcher (the first one), head story designer Artur Ganszyniec and project lead Jacek Brzeziński, have started a new studio called Different Tales and are releasing a narrative game this August. Wanderlust Travel Stories is all about travelling the world from the perspectives of several characters with their own anecdotes.
It's meant to be a relaxing experience, despite how rushed globe-trotting can sometimes feel in real life. Although the player is meant to be unhurried, their choices will affect the mood (via "stress" and "fatigue") of the character as well as managing a travel budget through choices made along each trip.
Wanderlust mixes actual photography from around the world with a more game-y interface that puts story text beside minimalist city maps where you can select options to continue the story in various ways.
Brzeziński says in a post on the game's Steam page that it's a game he hopes people will play when they're travelling. Or when they wish they're travelling. Each story has you make choices as a different protagonist, coloring their experience of travelling the world. "What you decide also makes the traveler change their world views," he says. "Every journey ends with your character becoming an internally ‘richer’ person." The trailer above briefly teases snippets from a few different stories, each told from a pretty intimate first-person perspective that seems to get into the head of each character.
Wanderlust Travel Stories will release on August 28th, but you can wishlist it on Steam now.
