The Franco-German channel Arte has joined forces with the studios Ram Ram Games and Business Goose to offer “30 Birds”, an adventure which transports the player into an astonishing Persian fable.
While there are more and more game releases each year, to stand out, certain independent productions compete in ingenuity. This is the case of Ram Ram Games and Business Goose studios, which are launching this November 28 30 Birdsan independent game published by the Franco-German channel Arte.
“It’s a very special game,” confides Coline Sauvand, artistic director of 30 Birdsat Tech&Co. “It has a strong cultural content with multiple and traditional inspirations.”
A trip led to the creation of 30 Birds
It all started with a trip to Türkiye, which dates back around ten years. In Istanbul, Coline Sauvand and Laurent Toulouse had the idea of imagining a logbook directly inspired by Persian miniatures. A book, The Istanbul Notebookwill then be created, and a few years later, the video game 30 Birds comes to transcribe, in a fantastic epic, this journey of a lifetime.
In 30 Birdswe play Zig, a detective who must find a missing goddess, Simurgh, by finding thirty birds. In worlds reminiscent of Persian art, we come across many characters who must be understood and known, all in an enchanting world: “It brings something different, something poetic,” confides Coline Sauvand.
To ensure that their game finds its audience, the developers wanted to make it as accessible as possible: “We made sure that the texts were never too long, that there was a good balance between the action and the story “We’re inspired by 1001 Nights by mixing it with an urban and modern universe. It’s a dynamic and funny clash,” she explains.
“This is our first game.”
30 Birds is not a very long game, but it offers a diversified adventure, with lanterns to find in the form of a main quest and around ten side missions.
Like a real old-fashioned adventure game, you have to play with the interactions to find the solutions to the riddles and puzzles: “The story infuses gameplay ideas, the music is also important, because it you will have to play it to succeed in certain phases. There are all the aesthetic aspects of the project in what the players must do.
“It’s our first game,” explains Laurent Toulouse, designer of 30 Birdsat Tech&Co. “It can’t be everything and anything, it has to be consistent.”
For this reason, the choice was made to draw the decorations by hand, making 30 Birds a true work of art before being fundamentally a video game. The title goes from 2D to 3D to create a successful mix and thus make us experience an epic in the company of two colorful characters.
For Laurent Toulouse, it was about imagining a game that captures players’ attention from the first glance: “It helped us a lot, we have a lot of additions to the Steam wish list. We hope it will produce good sales.”
30 Birds is available on PC and Mac for 18 euros and will arrive on Nintendo Switch soon.
