A Scottish graphic designer has started working on a mystery game set in his home town of Paisley.
Richard Gellatly, who goes by the name Bovine in his works, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Crystal Garden, a game named after a real-life Chinese takeaway in the Scottish town.
Gellatly gained some media attention last year when early experimental footage showing a character running through real Paisley locations went viral among Scots.
In October he told Glasgow Live that he was inspired by Grand Theft Auto 3, saying: “I have a memory, which I’m sure a lot of guys around my age will have had in 2001 when GTA III was released, which was ‘I want my hometown version of this’.”
Encouraged by the reaction to his early footage and seeing other creators discussing it, Gellatly now wants to take things further, launching a Kickstarter in attempt to turn Crystal Garden into a full game.
“It’s always a dark and wet time of the year on the West Coast of Scotland where you’ll need to navigate through a town overflowing with subterranean skeletons in its antediluvian aqueducts,” the game’s synopsis reads.
“With assistance from an elusive ectoplasm, you uncover mysteries surrounding the town that have been obscured for a good reason and your only sanctuarium salutis becomes the Crystal Garden, a Chinese takeaway long rumoured to conceal primordial powers in the fabric of its foundations, ancient things. Don’t let anything bad happen.”
Gellatly’s background is in audio production and visual design, and stresses that while he’s a “first time solo developer” and will need to “spend time learning and discovering best practices that a tenured developer or team would already have in place”, he thinks it will be “worth it in the end”.
The Kickstarter also has some rather unique rewards – backers can get their name put on a nameplate on one of the doors in the Rowan Court high flats (another real-life Paisley building), submit graffiti to appear in the streets or record their voice to be played in one of the town’s buzzer entry systems.
