So together with Santa Monica, we made a late call.
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The Chinese Room has confirmed via Twitter that Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will offer gameplay length of approximately 4 to 6 hours.
And then The Chinese Room didn’t have time to include it in the list of controls on the main menu screen or implement an onscreen suggestion when the game proper started.
“We probably should have announced the run button before launch, but we didn’t”, Pinchbeck admits.
It seems this very specific way of sprinting, by holding down an input, came to the game quite late after some final testing.
Her new score is perfectly suited to the game – big on emotion when it has to be and a suitable counterpoint to the idyllic yet unusual imagery which you’re presented with throughout the adventure. That meant that if you kept moving, you’d gradually ramp up to a run speed, specifically to deal with issues with how long potential back-tracking could take, given the game’s non-linearity. “It didn’t matter about the speed, it was the psychology, the choice”, says Pinchbeck.
And then suddenly launch was right on top of us, and something had been missed.
Essentially, an auto sprint option was replaced with a player-controlled sprint, but as it was swapped out at the last minute it wasn’t included in-game apart from the online manual. We’ll have our review of it up soon, so please stay tuned. “But the most important thing is that we get the word out to players, so here we go”.
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From handsome fields of grass, to quaint little towns, all the way to stunningly detailed interiors, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a magnificent work of art that needs to be seen to be believed. “Hopefully it didn’t spoil the experience too much for you, and knowing you can get around faster if you need to will make you want to return to explore more”.
