Inner Void Interactive reveals a new game in development temporarily called Project Frozen World, and talks about the future of their failed kickstater Zaharia.

Our new project and the future of Zaharia

Sadly we didn't manage to find any investor interested in developing Zaharia with no multiplayer or free-to play features and we didn't have enough funds to develop it on our own, so we decided to work on a lower budget project. Creating a second KS campaign would have been too risky, another failure would have meant the end for Inner Void Interactive and for Zaharia.

The new project, temporary called Project Frozen World, will be settled in a post-apocalyptic world where the remains of humanity are facing a new Ice Age. Project Frozen World will be a roleplaying experience in which the player will constantly struggle to survive, leading his/her party across a white wasteland.  

We won't throw away all the work we did on Zaharia and working on Project Frozen World will allow us to develop various gameplay mechanics that we'll be able to use in future games, we will also be able to use some of our time to further improve the setting of Zaharia, in order to create a better game in the future. 

We still hope to develop Zaharia and maybe Project Frozen World will be profitable enough to let us start again working on Zaharia. If you want to know more details about the reasons behind the temporary suspension of Zaharia and the development of a new project, you can find a detailed article on our website at this link.  

More details about Project Frozen World will be revealed in the future, stay tuned!

It should come as no surprise, given their last update from Wednesday, but Zaharia has been officially canceled now.

There is no news at the moment on what the next steps are and if they will have another go in the near future.

The Kickstarter pledges for Zaharia are with 14 days to go still nowhere near the goal of 120.000 pounds adn the devs are considering what is next from them.

he Kickstarter campaign didn't go well, despite all the positive feedbacks we received we weren't able to properly spread the word about Zaharia.

What will happen now? We don't know yet, we're currently searching for an alternative solution and, if we find something, we'll let you know through our social pages (Facebook and Twitter). We knew that Kickstarter was a risk, so we're not unprepared for this scenario.

We worked a lot on Zaharia, so we can't simply cancel the project, but we don't want to ruin the project with a cheap development that will only lead to cheap results. It would be horrible to cut most contents to release a soulless, anonymous game, both for you and for us.

We want to thanks all the backers for the support, we loved to share Zaharia with you and we hope you will continue to follow and support us.

Inner Void Interactive has posted the sixith update for Zaharia with a look at some concept art that shows how they want the cities in Zaharia to look.

The concept of city in Zaharia

In this update we will explain how we want the cities in Zaharia.

We don't want them to be only huge quest hubs, cities must be massive places where the player get lost and meet infinite possibilities. In Zaharia the economic and political power dwells in the biggest cities of the Empire, cities are full of opportunities of any kind and they will be the starting point of most players' adventures.

Inner Void Interactive has posted the fifth update for Zaharia that talks about the games Azhanit Cult. As I said before the bad news is funding has stalled.

The game has only managed to get £12,899 of the £120,000 goal with 20 days left.

The Azhanit cult

First of all, we want to thank all the backers, we've seen some real support from you and that is really inspiring for us.

This update is another dev. diary we released some time ago, it's about the most popular religion among the Zaharian Empire, because we believe this to be an important element for creating a realistic world, with its own specific people. History shows us how religion has always shaped peoples and societies, so much that we can’t possibly give it a minor role in what we are realizing. We can’t forget the impact that spirituality has over the material world.

The Azhanit religion  

The Azhanism, the cult of Azhan, can count on a millenary history. In the course of time, besides its own inner evolution, it has deeply characterized the Zaharian cultural system, giving birth to a strong Oriental and Middle Eastern context. Religion, in these cases, is the starting point to give a philosophical and cultural setup to one population. The values estabilished by a cult generally mark out its worshippers and, as time goes by, change their world views. In order to create this religion, not only did we draw inspiration from Islamism, as one can think at first sight, but we mainly considered aspects from Zoroastrianism, and also a bit from Buddhism.

The cult of Azhan is really unusual, and it differs from the majority of the occidental doctrines since it bestows a great dignity on human condition. Material world is the paradise Azhan created to host humanity, not a punishment for the original sin. He spread his mark of benevolence all over the world he created, a constant revelation of the divine will that would make humans tell good from evil. In this way humanity could fight chaos and slowly build an order that would allow humans to free themselves from pain.

Inner Void Interactive has posted the fourth upate for Zaharia that goes into detail about the world of Zaharia. Funding is still low, but the game still has 22 days left.

The world of Zaharia

We want to share with you some details about the world of Zaharia, from our first dev. diary.

We worked hard to realize a fresh and original experience, which will stand out from the classic fantasy clichés, and we finally managed to realize the Zaharian Empire. Its name comes from a huge region called Zaharia, whose people share the same culture and religion. This update will summarize the general setting of the game, while the next ones will analyze other important themes like religion, culture, magic and technology.

As shown by the map, the Zaharian Empire is widely extended, so much that allows a great variety of weather and geographical conditions. This is the reason why every settlement will be characterized in a different way, depending on its position. A great part of the Empire is settled down in the coast, where the mediterranean climate and the huge availability of water facilitate the agriculture activity. Fields and forests will cover these landscapes, while the hinterland presents impressive mountain chains with frigid climate, especially during Winter. Beyond the mountains, climate gets drier and water starts missing, until the territory becomes desertic and inhospitable. Despite that, a lot of settlements manage to survive in these barren areas, which are full of mineral resources that can be exported to get all the necessary supplies, rather hard to find in other ways.

The Zaharian Empire counts more than 30 million people, but not everyone belongs to the Zaharian culture and ethnic groups, since many of them are immigrants coming from other nations. This leads the region to be a social melting-pot, with a deep interaction between cultures and a multitude of different way of seeing religion and society.

Inner Void Interactive has posted the third upate for Zaharia that goes into detail on the games skill sysyem, and talks about the consciousness of a thousand worlds.

 The Skill System & Consciousness of a Thousand Worlds

In this update we will briefly explain how the skills work in the game.

First of all, the skills won't unlock perks simply leveling up, in the final game the player will need to find a proper teacher in order to obtain a perk.

Combat skills have an obvious purpose, they define the proficiency of a certain character in defending and using various weapons. Those skills will be useful in combat, but sometimes they will be useful in dialogues too, thanks to some rare stat checks.

Knowledge skills are some really versatile skills and they can be useful in many situation. They are really useful in dialogues and unlock a lot of different lines, but some of them have different practical uses. With the Alchemy skill it will be possible to brew potions or assemble bombs; the Magic skill will help the character to resist to magic and it's a necessary skill for mages; the Medicine skill will allow the character to treat wounded people.

Practical skills are useful mostly outside the dialogues. The Athletic skill allow the character to improve his Stamina; the Steal skill allow the player to steal things from people in different situations (Yes, in dialogues too); the Lock Picking skill will allow the player to get through locked doors; the Sneak skill will reduce the noise of footsteps and other actions in the stealth phase and will allow the player to learn some really important stealth perks.

Social skills are useful for a massive amount of stat checks in dialogues and they can be combined with the character's reputation for a better result.

Skills are improved using experience points, which can be earned by the player doing quests. The more a character is experienced with a certain skill, the more it will cost further improvements, that's will encourage the player to invest some points in other skills and improve the character's versatility.

Inner Void Interactive talks about the stealth system of Zaharia in the games second update on Kickstarter. Now on to the bad news funding is going slow, and the game has only managed to get £11,518 of the £120,000 goal.

The Stealth system

At first, we want to thank Inxile for having included Zaharia in their last update

This update is about the stealth system and how it will work among the other features of the game.

We created Zaharia on four different pillars of gameplay: Role-Play, Exploration, Combat and Stealth. These for pillars give to the player different ways to proceed through the game.

We want Zaharia to have a real stealth management, in order to have more ways to solve a quest. The stealth in Zaharia won't be related only to combats, but having a stealthy character can be useful in any situation.

Let's make a practical example: the player needs to take a certain item from a heavy guarded location. Breaking the main door and killing everyone in the building won't be the smartest option, because it will affect the character's reputation. Offering a bribe to some guards, with the help of some diplomacy, will allow the player to obtain the item, but this way he will lose a lot of money. Without a stealthy character it's either loss of money or massacre, but entering the building to steal the item is the best solution in this situation. In Zaharia there will be a lot of different ways to solve a problem, but they won't be all equal in terms of costs and rewards.

The stealth system will work in real time, allowing the player to precisely move his entire party, with the aid of a pause button. Positioning is of primary importance during stealth, because guards and enemies will have a view cone, affected by the lighting, being in the cone may lead to a fight and will allow the guard to call for reinforcements. The player will be able to enter in stealth mode every time and everywhere, in this mode there will be many different interactions with the environment, it will be possible to hide in some special areas (e.g. behind a curtain or in a wardrobe), to do various silent actions (e.g. slowly opening a door) or to silently dispose of an opponent.

Inner Void Interactive has posted the first update for Zaharia with more details on the  prototype demo, and Steam Greenlight.

What will change in the final game, compared to the prototype? (And Zaharia on Steam Greenlight)

First of all, we created a page on Steam Greenlight. We know that a lot of people doesn't like Steam, but we already have a lot of DRM Free alternatives, so you shouldn't worry about it, Zaharia will be available without DRM. 

Steam Greenlight can improve our visibility and lead to a better Kickstarter Campaign, that's why we created our page. In addiction to that, if Zaharia gets greenlit, we will be able to send Steam keys to any interested backer.

And now let's talk about the prototype. We posted this little article on our website, but we think it can be useful to have it directly on Kickstarter.

The prototype has been built using pre-alpha features, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to start a Kickstarter campaign. A lot of things are still missing, others need a lot of work to become deeper and work better. Most developers do not share anything using pre-alpha features, but we think that this prototype can provide a particular message: “we can do this game”. We think that interested players will be able to look beyond the roughness of a prototype and see some of the features we want to insert in the full game.

Inner Void Interactive has sent news the kickstarter for thier RPG inspired by Middle Eastern, and Asian cultures is now live. Here is the usual video, and some details.

Zaharia is an RPG with an oriental and middle eastern flavored setting, inspired by Middle East cultures charm and made with care to be original but, at the same time, plausible and convincing.The player will be able to create his own character and use him freely, writing his own story in the world of Zaharia without neither compromises nor constraints.

While exploring the game’s world, the player will discover its centuries-old history, and will come in contact with a world radically different from the ones inspired to European Middle-Age.

Despite the freedom given to the player, the game will have a strong narrative part, and any single character and quest will be made with great care to be settled into a complex, evolving and living world.

Then the player will create his/her own character and live uncountable adventures across the world of Zaharia,without forgoing his/her conceptual freedom to make any kind of choices, both inside and outside dialogues. All choices will have a more or less effective impact that will make the game evolve consequently.

• Isometric 3D graphic;
• Turn-based battles based on our original rules’ system;
• Narrative and Interpretative non-linearity, allowing the player not only to choose which quest to follow, but also to make choices and solve problems in many different ways;
• A free-roaming world, Fallout style;
• A large number of skills and stats to manage, in order to customize your own virtual alter-ego in every small detail;
• An original setting created from scratch, inspired to late medieval Persia and Arabia, and completely different from the classic fantasy settings;
• Development of mature themes: slavery, sexuality, racism, theology, philosophy, morality, politics and so on;
• Five main factions to choose from, each of them deeply characterized and different from the others;
• Innovative magic system, making mages something more than portable siege weapons

Now after reading all that that and your still not interested the developers have a early prototype for everyone to try. Not many games do so this is a nice surprise.

Zaharia prototype

On the occasion of Kickstarter, we developed a little prototype with some alpha features. The prototype has a stand alone story with different endings, according to the choices of the player. This prototype is not representative of the final product, click here to discover how it will evolve during the development.

Note that Mac and Linux prototypes may be unstable, due to the lack of testers, but we’ll work during the Kickstarter campaign in order to fix their problems.