We’re very excited that, after almost four years of development, Silence is now available on Xbox One and Windows 10. The digital version supports Xbox Play Anywhere, allowing you to enjoy the game on both systems and only having to buy it once. It’s the sequel to The Whispered World that tells the story of Noah and Renie, siblings who find a gate to Silence, a world between life and death, while looking for shelter during a bomb raid.

The idea for Silence was created while we were still working on The Whispered World. We wanted to explore new ways in which to create a modern adventure game. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to achieve that and asking the question: How should we re-invent a classic gaming genre?

Historically, as a player you would discuss puzzles with your friends for weeks, eventually finding solutions, and that process of discovery was a huge part of the enjoyment. Nowadays, and with the Internet, solutions are only as far away as a mouse click. Being able to look up problems immediately takes away the fun of puzzling things out. But the fun is what we wanted to preserve. Therefore, we’ve focused on the flow of the experience. We still have challenging puzzles, but we didn’t want them to impede the plot or to disrupt the experience of being part of the story.

At the same time, we’ve modernized the visuals. Our goal was to preserve the charm of the detailed, hand-painted artworks we’ve created for The Whispered World, and to bring them to live in a 2D Environment with 3D characters. Eventually, we worked with a process called projection mapping. That allowed us to project the hand painted images on 3D models, providing us full flexibility in terms of positioning, framing, and zooming. A process that opened completely new ways of staging in-game scenes for us.

With this focus on narrative and staging, we’re trying to give players a fluid experience that will draw them into the story and allow them to immerse themselves into our character’s journey without interruptions. Speaking of, the gameplay was designed with gamepad controls in mind. But given that the PC is the home platform of adventure games, we’ve made sure players can switch input systems at will.

Silence is our first adventure game we developed for both PC and Xbox One, and we hope that Noah, Renie, and their best friend Spot (a giant caterpillar with very special abilities), will be good adventure game ambassadors, and that many players will enjoy their story.