Achara Studios

10/11/2023

08/01/2023

Hi! We're keeping pretty quiet as we're working on the February demo. It's an early build and quite limited - think the size of one location from Torment - but you'll be able to glimpse a bit more on your way there.

The way we design the world, it's not meant to be huge. It's to be dense, full of surprises and exotic, and yet cozy and familiar. It's got to have places you want to get back to (and we're building systems that will encourage you to sip that morning coffee at a tiny cafe while reading newspaper).

It's an open world in the vein of Gothic. It's got twisted passages, secret places, hidden challenges. Stuff that's only mentioned and never marked on the map. Rewards for the keen observer, the conversationalist, the loremaster.

For that reason, quest markers and the automap will be disabled by default. :v

Oh, and Happy New Year!

04/11/2022

So, is the game like Repo Man (1984)? Like Repo Men (2010)? Like Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008)?

The foundational ideas came from a story written for a flash fiction contest. It was about a girl who lost all will to live - and, as a cure, got her heart replaced with one ripped from a dolphin.
And while this experimental therapy seemed to work perfectly at first, in the end, she succumbed to the call of her new heart.

20/10/2022

Not just synthwave!
Here's a fragment of the track composed for those long walks by the sea - "Along the shoreline".

16/10/2022

By popular request, just the music.

(available on Spotify and other streaming services soon!)

Composed, performed and produced by Alan Padziński(c) Heytan Music 2022

13/10/2022

Well yes, it's the trailer!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1065740/Repo_Man/In this quirky first-person RPG you are a repo man - a debt collector.Track down debtors, claim their ass...

14/09/2022

"He couldn't afford a heart so he built one himself."

20/08/2022

Florence seems unbreakable - until she doesn't. Her plotline is a rocky road.

02/08/2022

UE 5 with its dynamic global illumination.

12/07/2022

Working on the announcement trailer.

20/06/2022

The Fae.
Project REPO is set in, *cough*, "a fading world of art nouveau, neon lights and New Age". It's a rather contemporary setting - they've got smartphones, electric cars, and bioware patent laws. It's also Magical Realism™, so magic isn't really all that *magical*.

Enter the mongrel descendants of fairytale creatures, demihumans known as the Fae. By the time of the REPO, they don't differ much from humans. Sometimes it's unusual skin color, sometimes it's the eyes, sometimes it's horns or hooves. The last winged fae died two centuries ago.

Truth be told, on the outside, they barely differ from humans.

They're built differently inside though.
In all centuries of attempts at assimilation, willing or otherwise, they never became participants of the human civilization.

They're outcasts. They're vagabonds. They do credit caRd scams, they deal drugs, they sell soothsayings and p**n online. Something in their blood prevents them from going to school, from keeping a day job, from building a city - and from conforming to human society.

To be fey-blooded is to be cursed; bound to a life one cannot escape.

12/05/2022

Lots of stuff happening in project REPO.
We've got the basic mechanics playable now. There's a lot of kickass writing done - you wouldn't believe how good it actually is. A ton of enviro work is underway to create space for all these stories.

Here's a shot of the coastal town of San Alma, with the high-tech metropolis of Seo-Daejeong in the background. That thing in the sky - it's the planet's rings and an icy asteroid spilling light as its surface is heated by the sun.

11/04/2022

Key NPCs in Repo have this dualism - where you meet them as ordinary people, in the real world - but their Big Dialogue pieces are set in scenes depicting their personal myth.

Here's Jeanne, a simple police officer - but viewed through eyes that see the Idea of her.

26/03/2022

Okay, so we've got two dialogue systems in this game. One is for chatting with regular NPCs, quick and simple.

The other is for key conversations in the game. They're important. They have to feel exceptional. They're done in the form of separate scenes, dioramas if you will - with the character composed into a 3d artwork of sorts.

We're playing with positioning the dialogue UI in these - the idea of having the dialogue subtitles and answer picker composed somewhere *into* the scene is pretty exciting art-wise.

She's animated btw. It's not a static visual novel illustration.

18/03/2022

Some early concept art for REPO MAN, captured in a realtime scene in-game.

It's Unreal Engine of course.