Independent developer Stout Games, creator of DINNER DATE, announces CHEONGSAM: a piece of VIRTUAL THEATRE, in which you ACT TOGETHER with an ADVANCED AI. In a lush and romantic park, Maggie and Michael get to know one-another: a touching and fanciful story with an orchestral score.
Maggie & Michael have managed to escape their friends and accidentally seem to have ended up in a park. Scarcely knowing one-another, they talk about aeroplanes, violins and their life: but they might not be so evenly matched. They do share those youthful interests, ambitions, fears and dreams that go well with chance encounters on nippy spring evenings.
„Cheongsam” is a piece of “virtual theatre”: while you take on the part of Michael, an advanced AI takes on the part of Maggie. By controlling his pose, facial expressions and gaze you act together with her in a unique performance. She interprets and changes her acting style to match yours, combining dialogue with actual play. The game does not slip into non-interactive story moments: the play is constant, and even simply looking around will be interpreted by Maggie and responded to.
The AI is specially written for Cheongsam. Maggie can combine many acting styles on the fly and react to Michael at a very high frequency. You may smile at her and she may smile back: but not if she feels quite differently. Perhaps she is playing stern and frowns back; or perhaps you smile unexpectedly and she is surprised. Your actions over time change the way she plays. Maggie can combine over 200 decisions and variables to create actions: some as small as a glance away as she jokes, some as large as changing her acting style itself. There are no large sets of pre-made animations: all is composed and arranged by the AI on the fly. This makes it possible for Maggie to respond to you in a way this will always be unique.
Where they will go after the park will be revealed when more information is made available, later this year.
Cheongsam—Essentials
Cheongsam will initially be available for Windows PC.
Cheongsam does not have a set release date.
Cheongsam—Context
More and more developers focus on alternative ways of working with games: focussing on using play as part of a whole and giving space to interesting narratives, experiences and moments. Gone Home, Firewatch, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Sunset, That Dragon, Cancer, Her Story, The Beginner’s Guide are but a small set of examples of games continuing trends heralded by The Path, Dear Esther, Thirty Flights of Loving, and Stout Games’ own Dinner Date.
There is a large challenge: how do we keep things interactive when characters are engaged in dialogue? Here Stout Games offers a radical solution: the player acts out the part and an AI interprets and returns the acting. This makes it possible to have meaningful interaction with in-game characters. This requires the difficult step of bringing advanced AI concepts (such as stochastic neural networks) to real-time environments: but the benefits are substantial.
Cheongsam continues the line set out by Dinner Date, where the focus lies on small character moments, personal stories and perspectives, placing you inside the character.
Dinner Date’s composer, Nathanael J. van Nispen tot Pannerden, returns for a full orchestral score, specifically made for Cheongsam.