Talking Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis on DS
The adventure game revival continues on Nintendo's handheld
While the success of the DS has resulted in seemingly hundreds of knock-off games based around caring for animals or adding up rows of numbers, it's also helped revive the point-and-click adventure game.
One series picking up friends and influencing people is Deep Silver's Secret Files. We really enjoyed its first DS incarnation Secret Files: Tunguska, and now characters Max and Nina are back in Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis.
So we left our questions in a dead letter drop for its German developers to pick up. Project lead Marco Zeugner from Animation Arts Creative, and producer Rene Lange from Keen Games, wrote us back using lemon juice…
Pocket Gamer: Do you think point-and-click games are coming back into fashion?Marco Zeugner: The audience is very small in comparison to the whole market, but Secret Files: Tunguska showed that if you get the basic elements right, you can reach a lot of players who normally don't play classical adventures.
How different is Puritas Cordis to Tunguska?One successful element in Tunguska was the gameplay (no action sequences, no time-based tasks and so on), and that's the reason why we didn't change it for Puritas Cordis. An adventure sequel typically offers a new story, new locations and of course new puzzles. The gameplay experience doesn't depend on technical features so much as other genres, so you don't have to change it from game to game.
In Tunguska, Nina and Max were a couple so how does their split affect the action in Puritas Cordis?It gives us the chance to tell the story from two perspectives and switch from one plotline to the other. It's good for the drama.
What DS features are you looking to expand on this?Rene Lange: One of the main focuses for Puritas Cordis were the stylus-based controls. Now the player has the opportunity to combine items in the game via drag-and-drop, in addition to the already successful system using the interaction symbols as in Tunguska. This brings a more comfortable way of interacting with items and objects.
Is Puritas Cordis a made-up group or is it based on history?Marco Zeugner: We loosely based it on a 15th Century Dominican priest called Girolamo Savonarola. He inspired us in terms of the founder of the Puritas Cordis sect Zandona. But the group around him is pure fiction.
Who writes the game's story and dialogue?The ideas for the stories came from me and I finished the storylines together with Jörg Beilschmidt, who is also responsible for the dialogues and the puzzle design.
What feedback did you get from players of Tunguska and how did this change Puritas Cordis?The most positive feedback was not to change too much. We tried to follow this advice of course. There was also some negative feedback. Some players thought the storyline was too complex to follow so we tried to tighten up the plot.
How influenced have you been by the Broken Sword adventure games?We liked the first two games a lot, but the change to 3D in the later games destroyed much of the great atmosphere. Still, the first Broken Sword games provided a welcome change from the adventure games from LucasArts or Sierra because they offered a serious and mysterious story.
Finally, what do you think will be the most exciting thing about Puritas Cordis?I think the fans can be excited to meet Nina and Max again in a new adventure. We've enhanced the quality of the graphics and cinematics to give the game the touch of a great adventure movie. I'm sure new players will love that too.
Our thanks to Marco and Rene for their time. The release date for Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis is yet to be announced but is expected sometime in early summer.