User:Razr Nation/Loving

Thirty Flights of Loving is a first-person interactive fiction adventure video game developed by Brendon Chung under his studio, Blendo Games, and released in July 2012. The game employs a modified version of id Software's id Tech 2 engine—originally used for Quake 2—and incorporates music composed by Idle Thumbs member Chris Remo. It follows the story of a three-member group as they prepare for a large heist of alcohol, and the aftermath of the operation.

The game is a non-direct sequel to Gravity Bone (2008), and features the same unnamed spy as the main character. It was developed as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Idle Thumbs' podcast, and offered alongside a free copy of Gravity Bone. Thirty Flights of Loving received critical acclaim from video game journalists, and scored 88 out of 100 at aggregate website Metacritic. A sequel, Quadrilateral Cowboy, is scheduled for 2014.

Gameplay
Thirty Flights of Loving is a first-person interactive fiction adventure video game that lasts for around 15 minutes. The player controls the same character from Gravity Bone, an unnamed spy who is taking part in an alcohol smuggling operation alongside non-playable characters Anita, a demolitions expert, and Borges, a forger. The game's story follows the group as they prepare for a large heist of alcohol, and the aftermath of the operation. The actual heist is ommitted from the game, although it is revealed that it went wrong.

Unlike Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving employs non-linear storytelling to reveal the events in a way that requires the player to piece together the story as they play. During gameplay, objectives and guidance are provided through the player's interactions with objects in the environment. The player has little control over the game mechanics, and is only able to move freely and pick up objects as needed to progress. Several optional actions, such as drinking alcohol, are available at several stages of the game.

Development


Thirty Flights of Loving was developed by Brendon Chung's video game studio Blendo Games. Chung, who worked as a level designer for Pandemic Studios, has contributed to the development of Full Spectrum Warrior and Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Thirty Flights of Loving was created using a modified version of id Software's id Tech 2, the graphics engine for Quake 2, alongside an add-on named Lazarus. Chung acknowledged that although he has worked with newer, "powerful and flexible" engines, he preferred the older engine because it was released as an open source platform, "so you can redistribute it for free."

The game was first conceived as a prototype to Gravity Bone, and was scrapped because it was "too dialogue heavy." However, Chung revived the idea after being contacted by Idle Thumbs to develop a game for their Kickstarter campaign. The main development phase, in which content creation took place, was finished within three months. Several more months were spent polishing the game and fixing software bugs. Chung brought multiple existing assets from Gravity Bone to develop Thirty Flights of Loving, and used a diverse set of tools to create the elements of the game. Blender was picked for the creation of models, while Audacity and Adobe Photoshop were used for audio and texture work. Another tool, GTKRadiant, was used to create the game's levels.

Chung developed Thirty Flights of Loving environment as a way to present the criminal nature of the group. He intentionally avoided the use of voiceovers and such, and insead modeled the environment to bridge "the disconnect between the player’s knowledge and the player’s character’s knowledge." Characters Anita and Borges were to be introduced using dialogue, but this was removed. However, they were later replaced with montages after Idle Thumbs' crew expressed concerns that the characters' relationships were unclear. Chung included a system to automate the generation of non-playable characters to replace the process of manually scripting every person in the game. He explained that although it allows characters to "randomly wander near waypoints," the software is "occasionally glitchy and behaves badly around staircases." This automation code was originally developed for a surveillance game prototype "that never panned out."

A first-person meal simulator was designed for Thirty Flights of Loving. The sequence included the main characters "enjoy[ing] street noddles." However, the idea was scrapped and replaced with the motorcycle ride featured in the final version. The gunfight scene portrayed in the game was supposed to have a "musical rhythm," inspired by the film Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka. The last level of the game is modeled from the French National Museum of Natural History. Chung explained that, when developing levels, he first spends time researching and "learning how things work." He elaborates that researching is important in "how it gives specificity and grounding" to a game. Thirty Flights of Loving is the seventh "Citizen Abel" game developed by Chung. The first two games were coded in 1999, while the following three were written between 2000 and 2004. The sixth game in the series, Gravity Bone (2008), became the first to be published.

Thirty Flights of Loving includes references to and Easter eggs from classic cinema, as did Gravity Bone. Films such as Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation, film directors Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, games Zork and Saints Row 3, and animated shows Animaniacs and TaleSpin are referenced in the campaign. The game incorporates music composed by Idle Thumbs member Chris Remo. Unlike most of Chung's previous games, Thirty Flights of Loving was not framed around a certain musical composition.

Release
Thirty Flights of Loving was announced in February 2012 as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Idle Thumbs' podcast. The Idle Thumbs team was able to talk to Brendon Chung about a possible sequel to Gravity Bone, which was offered as one of the rewards of their Kickstarter campaign. Those who supported the campaign received Thirty Flights of Loving before it's official release. They also gained access to an exclusive "Goldblum mode" that was not part of the general release. The game, alongside a free copy of Gravity Bone, was made available to early supporters in July 2012, and to the general public a month later via Steam. A Mac OS X followed in November 2012.

Reception
Thirty Flights of Loving received critical acclaim upon release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the game received an average score of 88 based on 10 reviews. Destructoid Patrick Hancock awarded the game 9.5 out of 10, stating that "you'll never look at linear storytelling the same way again." Gamespot's Carolyn Petit considered that "the pleasure of Thirty Flights of Loving emerges from the things left unshown", allowing the player to infer and imagine the events, such as the heist itself, that are not otherwise shown. Graham Smith of PC Gamer extolled the minimalist storytelling, citing that Thirty Flights of Loving "tells a better story in 13 minutes than most games do in 13 hours".

IGN's Nathan Meunier said the game "gets off to a fascinating start before completely throwing any and all expectations you might form during its first few minutes into the wood chipper." British video game magazine Edge elaborated that Thirty Flights of Loving was "an intriguing psychological thriller that feels like Wes Anderson taking on Hitchcock." The magazine added that the game had an "wonderfully ambiguous" story, crafted thanks to the replacement of dialogs with "artful framing and shrewd gestures, and booting out cutscenes in favour of prickly jump-cuts." Greek magazine PC Master praised the game's storytelling, and stated that Thirty Flights of Loving "attempts to blur the lines between gaming and art." Thirty Flights of Loving was nominated forthe Narrative Award at the 2013 Independent Games Festival.

Sequel
A sequel to Thirty Flights of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy, is being developed by Chung with an expected release in 2014. The game, though not a direct sequel in story to Gravity Bone or Thirty Flights of Loving, takes place in the same universe and follows hacker overseeing one or more adept agents that have missions to infiltrate buildings and steal documents. Unlike its two preceeding games, Quadrilateral Cowboy uses id Software's id Tech 4 engine—originally used for Doom 3. According to Chung, the new engine provides "a lot more modern functionality" than the earlier engine used in the first two games.