If you were like me and had a Sega Genesis when you were growing up, then chances are you’ve played ECCO The Dolphin and/or ECCO The Tides of Time. They’re great games, both in depth and graphics, right up there with classics like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. With that said, Ed Annunziata, the game designer of these Sega games is now making a new dolphin based game called The Big Blue. He’s also brought along various members of the Ecco team including the composer Spencer Nilsen. They’re calling The Big Blue “The next generation, underwater, action/adventure game by the original Ecco the Dolphin team.”
As is the way it goes these days, Big Blue needs funding. Especially if it hopes to be the AAA art game Ed Annunziata and his team want. They’re crowd funding the game via Kickstarter. Check out their pitch video below…
Big Blue has a few goals. First, they want to make this game to be beautiful, with the ocean “teaming with life“. This will be done with artificial life technologies that make the ocean life reactive and living virtually. The former Ecco devs are also promising perfect and super realistic animation for the sea life that will be featured in the game.
Then there’s the gameplay, which they break down as so…
The Big Blue is a massive adventure game. The basic game play involves the following:
- Exploration
- Quests
- Collection and spawning of life forms
- Action puzzle solving
The Big Blue will be a highly unique play experience and will include these unique game play features:
- All Creatures are controllable
- Control multiple creatures at the same time (like a swarm)
- Aquascape and populate your own small sea
- Breed and multiply creatures to be used for various purposes (like quest assistance)
While only concept work has been done, there is a playable Big Blue prototype which you can play for free. It’s very basic, but shows some of their ideas. You can play it here. (Click and hold on to a dolphin)
The Big Blue is being developed with the Unity engine and will run on will run on Mac, Windows PC, Linux, and iOS and Android platforms. After it’s initial release, they also want to release it on Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo game consoles.
If all of this sounds like a good idea, you can support this experienced team of game developers and back The Big Blue on Kickstarter.