Twitchy asks Jan Klose, Creative Director at Deck13 about the upcoming Jack Keane
first of all Hello and thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Can you introduce yourselves and what your role in the project is?Hi, my name is Jan Klose, and I’m the Creative Director at Deck13. My job is to make sure that all the assets of the game production come together and that the original creative line is preserved throughout the whole development process.
Ankh proved a huge success – are the same team working on Jack Keane?
Yes. There were many things we intended to do with Ankh that could not be done due to time and budget constraints. With Jack Keane, we had a bit more freedom and were eager to realize all those ideas that were still in our heads!
What inspired or triggered the initial concepts?
There were lots of sources of inspiration. First of all, the Indiana Jones adventure movies and the game Monkey Island should be mentioned. Also, movies like James Bond and the new version of The Mummy were interesting references.
What stage of development is Jack Keane at now and when should we expect a release date?
The game is finished and already released in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Because of this we could receive some excellent ratings and nice awards in the last few weeks.
Now we are finalizing the English localization and preview versions should be available soon. We hope to continue then the success in rest of Europe as well.
Can you describe Jack Keane? The interface, 1st or 3rd person, the puzzles and challenges, the characters etc.
As you might have guessed, the hero of the game is called “Jack Keane”. The game is set in the British colonial times in the Indian Ocean. Being a poor captain with a lousy ship, Jack is happy to get the assignment to deliver a secret agent of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, to a mysterious island. But alas, his ship crashes, and the agent disappears! Now Jack is all alone on this island – at least in the beginning. Later he will meet Amanda, an attractive bounty hunter and the crazy “Doctor T.” who strives for domination over the British Empire.
With Ankh, we tried to revive the adventure genre and bring the feeling of movies like “Shrek” or “Ice Age” to the PC gamers. With Jack Keane, we intended to go one step further and pack the spirit of classic adventure movies like Indiana Jones into an adventure. The main idea was to move away from silent, boring pixel hunting towards thrilling action – however without breaking the rules of classic 3rd person point-and-click adventure games. Therefore you cannot die, there is never real time pressure, and you can never mess things up completely and revert to a previously saved game. But in many places, the feeling of drama and thrill is created.
Also, some puzzles have different solutions so that the gameplay experience is not totally linear.
On any of your projects how much time does it take to create your games? And what’s your favourite stage of work? Creating the story, inventing the characters, devising puzzles, seeing the finished product?
All of the different stages are very interesting: In the beginning, it is very exciting to invent something totally new. Then, when reaching the first prototype, it is a great feeling to see all of this come to life for the first time. Later, there’s the horrible phase of the pre-release version which is always full of bugs and does never meet our own expectations, and much work has yet to be done. Finally, when seeing the finished product, there’s a great relief but also an uncertainty about how the game will be received by the players. After the first reviews (at least regarding Jack Keane), the relief turns into joy when people start writing that they enjoy playing the game.
Have you any ideas what your next adventure title will be, or will you be leaving Jack Keane open ended for another episode?
Because we fell in love with Jack (well, in a platonic sense), we’re very keen (ha!) to produce another title. However there are also other ideas and projects we are working on. It’s definite that we are going to do another adventure, but whether it will be another Jack Keane episode or a totally new title remains to be seen.
Finally thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us.
Thank you for these nice questions.
