// Kalaban

Video trailer

Description

Kalaban is a horror-themed 2D action adventure by Rayhouse Productions. The game focuses on story-telling and open-ended gameplay.

The game is set in the year 1995, in an alternate history version of Finland. The main character of the game is Bob, a hermit and an American who has moved to Finland. Bob’s cabin is attacked by a mutant monster, which triggers the story. He must find out what is going on around him and discover the reason behind the weird outbreak.

Unique story and characters: While the game has a basic premise of mutant invasion, it also features a story with real depth and complexity.
Top-down action: In the heart of the gameplay is the exploration and combat. You kill monsters, gain loot and eat food to survive. We’ve wanted to make the combat fun and approachable, compared to similar survival horror titles.
Mini-sandbox: After the introduction, the player is let loose on the game world. You’re given the freedom to explore the setting in a non-linear fashion.
Dark comedy: The game is presented with a serious tone, but beneath it lies an absurd comedy, filled with strange events and characters.
Player choice matters: Your actions and choices directly affect the how the story plays out. The characters’ destiny lies in your hands.
Hand-crafted world: All the level backgrounds are unique, and the main character is completely hand-animated. We’ve wanted to achieve a high level of polish with the art.
Back to the 90s: The game is set in the recent past of Finland. The game is littered with tropes and references to the history and culture of our country. In addition to that, we’ve taken many influences from older DOS titles, and brought their design to the modern day.

We’re a small, independent company from Finland, founded in 2013. We’ve done contract work, such as graphic design and commercial animation for our customers. Despite our small size we’ve wanted to put a special emphasis on quality and well-designed content.

Q: Will there be multiplayer?
A: No. This is a story-oriented single-player experience.

Q: Is this a Filipino game?
A: No. We’re a Finnish development team. The name was chosen purely because of its ominous nature.

Q: Did you borrow the date from My Summer Car?
A: Actually, it was a pure coincidence. The concept of Kalaban was first conceived back in November 2014, and that’s when we chose to set the game in 1995. We only recently learned that My Summer Car is also set in the summer of ’95.

Q: What were your inspirations for this game?
A: We’ve written numerous blog posts about this subject, but a short answer would be: System Shock, Sanitarium, Crimsonland and DreamWeb.

Q: Why is there an American in the title role?
A: You know, stories are about conflicts. We felt that this choice would generate interesting tension and situations in terms of storytelling.

Q: Is this game like Postal?
A: Actually, it’s quite different. Postal is a top-down action game, focused mainly on mayhem and carnage, while Kalaban is an open world action adventure. The tone is also quite different, but we can see that from a purely visual standpoint one might make the connection between the two.

Q: Will there be role-playing elements in the game / Is this an RPG?
A: Kalaban has inventory management, quest markers, a map screen and NPCs which you can interact with. However, there is no xp or leveling up, so I don’t believe that it technically qualifies as an RPG. Also, there is no character customization, which is one of the key features in RPGs. When you play Kalaban, you are Bob, not a custom rolled character.

Q: Will there be a free demo / shareware of the game?
A: When the game is finished, yes.

Q: When is the game coming out?
A: We’ve promised that it will be released on Q4 2016, so you’ll get it by the end of this year.

LINKS TO EXTERNAL SITES:

Official site[www.rayhouseproductions.com]
Kalaban at IndieDB
Kalaban at GameJolt[gamejolt.com]
Development blog[kalabandev.blogspot.com]
Press kit[rayhouseproductions.com]