Back Story of Okabu
Okabu centers around the conflict between two tribes – the Yorubo and the Doza. Many
generations ago, a ideological rift tore the population into two factions – those that felt a deep affinity with nature and wanted to maintain a simple life in harmony with the environment, and those that felt that their life could be improved by harnessing machinery to exploit the land.
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While the Yorubo dedicated their lives living harmoniously with nature, the Doza travelled to a far part of the continent, pursuing an industrialised existence and exploiting their environment. As many, many years have passed, the Doza have exhausted all of their resources, and their hunger for raw materials has driven them out of their borders, in a search for fresh lands to devour. Their path of destruction has finally arrived on the doorstep of their distant cousins, the Yorubo, and the Doza have begun to enslave and imprison these peaceful people and tear apart the natural beauty of their homeland.
With hope fading amongst the Yorubo, the pollution from the Doza smog stacks has spread far and wide, eventually reaching the habitat of an ancient race of Cloud Whales, high above the ground. The pollution has begun to cause a great sickness, leading the elders to dispatch our heroes, the brothers Kumulo and Nimbe, to investigate the source of the pollution.
Nature vs. Industry
HandCircus’ founder Simon Oliver explained to us that the premise behind the game was to show the power of nature when the industrial world tries to break into it. He credits shows like Life, Blue Planet, and Planet Earth has heavy influences when designing the title.
While the design of the game might have been influenced by those shows, one strong influence that Oliver credited to the game’s gameplay and characters was West and North African regions. One region in particular was Botswana, which is predominantly a dry area that cycles through wet season to bring plants/grass, bugs, animals and then goes back to dry. Oliver spoke of the Botswana nature area as being resilient through thick and thin. One can certainly see that influence in the game trailer (above).
As for the antagonist, as mentioned above it will be the industrial tribe known as The Doza. Through four worlds that contain four levels, players will battle their way through the onslaught of the The Doza trying to take over nature. Players will go through puzzles, have to use strategy and generally work their way to fight back what the industrial world is trying to do to nature — which is to wipe it out.
Gamers will be able to choose from four different characters, each bringing a different set of skills to the game. You’ve got Captain Monkfish (the Fisherman), Picolo (the Pied Piper), Roki (a Doza Mechanic turned good) and Kat and Toto (warrior and pet). Again, each brings their own skill to the game, and each will help solve different puzzles, improve strategies and so forth.
Other details of Okabu
On top of the characters and the main quest, the game will also feature mini-games. So, even when you’re done taking down The Doza then you can still go back and finish small side quests and mini-games. In total, the game should bring about 8 hours of gameplay with 16 hours possible once everything is said and done. This can change a bit if you take into account the local co-op that is included (no online as of yet) and the possibility of a lot of physics driven fun that can be had with the environment in the game. Also included in Okabu is the existence of leaderboards, both in single-player and co-op modes.
At the end of the day, HandCircus wants gamers to be a part of the world they created for them. Much like the classic game Super Mario World, where there was a sense of place and exploration, Oliver and company (no pun intended there) wanted gamers to explore and have fun with the characters and environments HandCircus put together. If everything goes as planned then this gamer sees that as ‘no problem’.
Okabu is set to release in Fall 2011. No price has been set.
