Game Connection Europe 2014 Impressions: Velvet Sundown

Continuing on with our coverage of Game Connection Europe 2014 , one of the experiences at the event I was most curious about was a project called Velvet Sundown .

. (Which, admittedly, sounds like it should be the name for the greatest dessert to ever exist.) Developed by the team at Tribe Studios Ltd. and powered by their in-house engine known as Dramagame, Velvet Sundown is officially described as “a social multiplayer role-playing game, taking place on a luxury yacht cruising the waters of a fictitious Caribbean state of Balbonia.”

But it’s a bit more complicated than that. In actuality, Velvet Sundown appears more akin to a 3D chat-room, kinda like if PlayStation Home or Second Life had social missions and objectives that were strictly based on peer-to-peer interactions. Basically, you’re given a scenario and placed on a yacht with a number of other live players, and you must play out the rest of the story for yourselves, through conversations and actions that are entirely up to the players. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, but thankfully the game is free-to-play, so those interested can download it without any buyer’s remorse.

When players first begin a play session, they randomly assume the role of one of 11 pre-set characters. Each character comes with their own basic background template, plus their own agenda and randomized goal to achieve per scenario. The true role-playing begins as soon as players start exploring the yacht, which serves as the setting for all current scenarios (although other locations are a possibility as Tribe Studios continues to push out content updates and additional scenarios). These scenarios are always multiplayer and require a minimum of 4 players to begin, and there are no bots or NPCs. Everyone encountered on the ship is inhabited by a real-world player asynchronously.

As players get their bearings, they will be assigned an end-goal for each scenario, but then go about fulfilling their win condition however they see fit. This includes free-form chatting with fellow shipmates, requiring cunning and wit, as well as a firm grasp on social etiquette, in order to achieve desired outcomes. Since everyone has their own win-condition, alliances are quickly formed and put to the test in an interesting social experiment of sorts. Since players can chat freely without predetermined dialogue trees, it’s entirely up to each participant to get a feel for their fellow players, and find the right words all on their own.

Being that the game is entirely based on social interactions, the scenarios wind up heavily influenced by improvisation and player personalities. Of course, the double-edged sword of peer-to-peer social interaction is that there are potentially just as many trolls looking to throw a wrench into the works, as players looking for genuine role-playing. Elina Arponen, CEO of Tribe Studios, admitted that they had certainly come across trolls or participants who preferred to ruin the scenario from time to time, as opposed to actually partaking in the social role-playing experience, but that the majority of players preferred to take the game “more seriously.”

It’s hard to adequately critique Velvet Sundown without spending a fair bit of time with it. While that should be said of nearly every game, the social nature of Tribe Studios’ first entertainment game running on the Dramagame engine makes it a particularly special case. After all, scenarios are drastically affected by the players you are grouped with. Such is life, eh? If you’re not a fan of Steam, you can also sign up to play the game on the official website. There’s not too much more information to be found there, but the basic idea of the game is to let players discover the world and characters for themselves, so that’s not too surprising.