Hi, we’re Dan, Harry, and Josh. We’d love to introduce you to our new game, Calvino Noir. It’s a film noir stealth adventure, and it’s coming to PS4!

The beautiful history of noir cinema is a big inspiration — that’s where we’ve drawn ideas for the look and story of the game. The classic film noir plot and characters are there, but in our own format, which is more closely inspired by films such as Bladerunner, and games such as Deus Ex.

The world of Calvino Noir borrows a lot from the war-torn and cruel portrayal of Vienna in The Third Man, one of my favorite films.

Architecture is also a big influence. We have been looking a lot at building design and architectural drawing styles. It is all about form and light, but in a very different way to film noir. We got our architect friend Ceri Williams to design realistic buildings from that place and time. With the monochrome art style, I think the arches, staircases and pillars all look stunning.

The spaces you move through feel like they could be places people would actually inhabit. That makes it more satisfying to sneak through to find clues or avoid guards. It is a new treatment for the platform game genre. Each location is set out like a real church or factory or hotel. For games that use stealth like ours, environment design is essential to not only give you fun places to hide, but also to build routes around interesting locations that actually make sense.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen that many churches with a ventilation system you can crawl around. That means that you’ll have to take your time to figure out where the guards are going so that you can plan your movements and hiding places. Wilt can take down guards but even he isn’t bulletproof. You’re going to have to figure out a way of getting close to them so they don’t notice until it’s too late.

It looks and feels more natural using the alcoves and corridors that would be there instead of places put in just to give you somewhere to hide.

Our main cast of characters have all been affected by the cataclysmic events of the first World War. Wilt deserted the British army and now uses his skills for espionage and blackmail. Siska was an orphan of the war, now as an idealistic young adult she uses the skills she learned on the street to fight corruption.

Arno is an old friend of Wilt and former chemical weapon designer — they met during the war and despite being on opposite sides, deserted and survived together. They end up working together to uncover the corrupt work of officials who are out to make money at the risk of everyone else. You play as all three — plus others — and use their unique skills to explore the maps.

Thanks for reading! If you want to find out more about the development and characters check out our blog and Twitter.