Hi there,
CGSociety has found a company that looks at the verging of gaming technologies and 2D film animation in a whole new light. Omar Khudari incorporates game play into an interactive animated film. His company Cecropia, has raised the curtain on The Act, the first release in a genre the company has dubbed filmgame.
If you have not done so already, read the article by clicking on the image here. If you have a comment on the article and the idea behind it, please give us your opinion.
Looks stunning, but all well done 2D does. I would love to see/play this. Pity there are no screens of the process of merging 2D with 3D etc…
I’ve been watching this for a while, and have been interested in seeing how it goes. It reminds me a bit of the old Dragon’s Lair game, more film like. Obviously the turning of knobs and such is where it differs but the idea is great. It’s nice to see something fresh like this that we haven’t seen for quite some time. I hope they get away from the north east, and do some testing elsewhere so others can give it a whirly too:) Great job to everyone involved, i’m looking forward to it.
I played this game at the Ottawa International Film Festival. It was a blast! Really challenging but it was a lot of fun!
This looks fantastic. Anything that pushes more personality into game animation gets a thumbs up in my book.
I dunno if it’s the first in the genre. Theres the already mentioned Dragon’s Lair. Then there’s Space Ace, possibly Leisure Suit Larry or the Phillip’s Zelda game, and maybe a few other neglected animated titles.
But if it’s executed really well, it’ll be neat to see something that hasn’t been done much since laserdisc was a considered an arcade novelty item. 
This is really a great idea. I, like the others loved the Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair games. This would be great on the Wii. The idea of doing all the stuff with no voices is a great touch too.
I do love what they are doing in 3D gaming now, but I think there can be a lot you can do with the 2D stuff too.
I saw this at Siggraph and was very impressed. Not just by the application of the art, but the thought process that goes into the game design. It’s a balancing act. If you come on too strong, or too timid, you fail at either getting the girl, keeping your boss happy, blending in with the crowd, etc. In the game there are several social scenarios that you have to navigate, and it requires you to pay close attention to the body language of all the characters in the scene you’re playing through.
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Wow, this game is looking superb! I love the art style. Just saw the trailer on the Cecropia website. Great animation. :applause: Can’t wait to play it
Thank you for bringing this article to light. Being involved in 2D animation and it’s community I found it very inspirational.
I too played this game at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It was really challenging and really fun. I remember standing there like Sunday with some of my Pratt colleagues and we were taking turns beating the game. The last level was one of the buggiest/hardest. We all kept taking turns and I finally beat it. We talked to the guy operating the booth and representing the game and we gave some really great input that I hope the final version will have.
Glad to see other Pratt people around!
This is not onlly stunning art, but it sounds that people really enjoy this game. I’m mostly excited at the possibilities this could bring to artists and animators. I really wish the project and the company th best of luck.
I remember playing this game at a pizza restaraunt a year ago or so. I also was happy to see this booth at Siigraph. The people at the booth were very friendly. last day of siigraph getting to the final part story and having the exhibit hall close up was fustrating. hehe. his game is very nice, and well done. I enjoyed eery part of it.
Sniff. This made my day seeing this. I’ve had one of the crummiest days all year. Thanks! I await this to come more widely available. 
Looks great!
I especially like that nurse 
Its nice to see some 2d stuff again.
I for one appreciate good 2d animation more than 3d because im aware of the amount of raw, artistic skill you need to pull it off well.
Definetly nice to see good old 2D animation once in a while. But from a game perspective, this just seems to be the neverending paradox between interactivity and storytelling which has been stalling in the same mud for a more than a decade. So at least to me this just seems more like the old Dragon’s Lair movies, where you basically just do the old try-fail-load-try-fail-load sequence over and over again and there really is no game there.
Stories by nature are structured and have to be timed to the very millisecond. Events only become stories once they are filtered and through structure achieve the beginning - middle - end parts that are crucial to any story. Interaction, on the other hand, destroys a story or at least weakens it immensely. Your timing is shot to hell, you have no way of telling how you can pace the story since everything changes.
Games are a robust system of possibilities and the more abstract they get, the more interactive they get. Stories are extremely brittle and everything from emotion to action suffers hugely if you meddle with the structure.
You can dig up the old question from back in the CD-ROM days, “Would you really spend 60 bucks for a movie?”. Or would you rather buy a good game with that? Honestly, I’d rather would just love to see Cecropia as a nicely structured story about two persons.
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