PIB Origins: The Zebrina

The name for the very first episode of Paranormal Intelligence Bureau has been set. It is going to be PIB Origins: The Zebrina. We landed on this name because the story of the Zebrina is the cornerstone of the story in the first episode. Furthermore, we chose this name because we didn’t want the name to spoil what happens in our version of the story. After all, in H.P. Lovecraft’s own words, the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. If you read our last blog post, you already know that PIB Origins: The Zebrina is releasing in 2018. Steam will be our most prominent platform, so look out for PIB in Steam’s coming soon section. Below we present to you a sneak peak at our version of the Zebrina from the game(Render).

“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” – H.P. Lovecraft

The Zebrina- Q-ship of the Great War

The Zebrina

In truth, The Zebrina was a Q-ship transporting coal from Falmouth, UK to St. Brieuc, France. Q-ships were heavily armored merchant ships, disguised as regular merchant ships, designed to lure hostile submarines into making surface attacks. One feature of PIB Origins: The Zebrina will be navigating the Zebrina away from danger. Or perhaps towards danger? The choice is yours. The channel between Falmouth and St. Brieuc was dangerous with german submarines sinking British and French ships. PIB Origins: The Zebrina will feature german submarines of the time. You can see our version of the German U-21 submarine below. Even though German submarines and marines were the terror of the war, be warned. In our version of the story, the crew might encounter far worse things than German Marines.

 The German U-21 submarine

The Soldier

The Soldier ended up as an agent of the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau. What happened to him that lead to him being recruited by the elusive Paranormal Intelligence Bureau? The Soldier is a veteran from the Great War, where he served in the British navy on an array of different ships. One of his last duties was aboard the Zebrina, when he and the rest of the crew set sail from Falmouth in Cornwall on an especially gloomy September day in 1917. The Zebrina never reached its destination, and was found washed ashore on Rozel Point without any of its crew. The Soldier never talks about what happened. In PIB Origins: The Zebrina, the story from this mysterious journey will see the light of day. Below you can see a glimpse of the PIB Origins: The Zebrina title screen. What horrors lie hidden in places you cannot see?

           PIB Origins: The Zebrina title screen with combat music from the game

The Paranormal

PIB Origins: The Zebrina will feature key paranormal entities from the PIB universe. In the game where Xcom meets H.P. Lovecraft, danger should lurk around every corner, don’t you think? Who knows what cultists have been able to summon in dark dungeons of old. Stay tuned here and on Steam in the coming soon section. Consider adding us to your wishlist to be notified instantly when Paranormal Intelligence Bureau is released. And with some famous words in Lovecraft’s own language R’lyehian, often spoken by devoted cultists, we bid you a sinister farewell. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war on the paranormal!

The post First episode- PIB Origins: The Zebrina appeared first on Kybernesis.

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau (PIB) is a series of turn-based tactics games in the style of XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics. The games will focus on agents of the Bureau’s fight against horrors based on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Or as he himself would call it, Yog-Sothothery. PIB Origins will explore the origins of the cast of PIB.

Introducing PIB Origins

As an extra treat, we present to you this theme music that our composer, Tristan Gray, exclusively composed for the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau. This will feature in the game. He calls it “Zebrina”. We will leave the rest up to your imagination.

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The train demo scene

We’re currently working on the first demo of the game, which will focus on three different scenes with a common storyline. The storyline will take the agents on a mission to stop a group of cultists, who are trying to summon a Lovecraftian horror from another dimension. The first scene will be the train demo scene, which was inspired by several positive comments on this concept art by Ståle Tevik.

Chris Steck, our short-term intern, used this as inspiration to make a new concept for the train demo scene. He focused on making the cultist slightly Lovecraftian in look. We think it turned out quite nice! Don’t you agree?

The Soldier and the Medic fights a group of cultists, and their leader, on the roof of a moving train. So we also plan to add hazards to the scene, where cultists or even agents can get knocked off the roof! And that could set the stage for a lot of fun, or more likely, horrible, situations.

In fact, in the final game, we will focus on adding interesting scenes like this as much as possible.

The story in the train demo scene

After extensive detective work, The Bureau found suspicious incidents along the Trans-Siberian railway. Incidents hinting at activities of a paranormal nature. The Bureau thus send the agents out to investigate the incidents. Which leads them to board the Trans-Siberian Express, to see if they can discover what is going on.

Needless to say, there are cultists on board with sinister agendas, who in good Lovecraft tradition are more than they seem. And the agents must reveal them before it’s too late! Their agenda and what the agents need to do to reveal them is something for you to find out in the demo when it’s ready.

We have another scene planned which we will show off later. And it’s even crazier than a fight on the roof of a speeding train! So make sure to keep up with future updates by joining our newsletter below, if you haven’t already!

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Introducing the Agents: The PIB Medic

Things take time… This is our first update since we showed off The Soldier back in November, due to being swamped with contract work to make ends meet. Christer finished the model for our second agent some time ago and it’s high time we showed her off! Hence, without any further ado, I present to you, the PIB Medic!

PIB Agent: The Medic (Real-time renders)

About the PIB Medic

As you can see from her battle scars, the Medic has seen some gruesome action. As a veteran of the Great War, it’s nothing unusual that she would’ve been left with horrifying scars. But not even the war could account for those, but rather the Lovecraftian horrors she has seen and fought as part of the bureau, that made her into the hardened medic you see before you. PIB Medic’s specialize in healing and buffing the physical bodies of the agents; through the use of medicine, drugs, and more obscure arts like the crafting of alchemic potions.

PIB Medic’s specialize in healing and buffing the physical bodies of the agents; through the use of medicine, drugs, and more obscure arts like alchemy. So the Medic will take more of a support role among the squad, but at the same time, they will definitely be more than capable of defending themselves.

The agents in the game

The Medic is indispensable to any squad sent out to battle the eldritch horrors of the Lovecraftian world. Squads in PIB should be evenly balanced, which is why we focus on the three most essential roles first. The Medic who will increase their survival chances, as described above. The Soldier who will be the muscles of the squad, should they need to take out horrors of the mortal kind, cultists or even just distract the less mortal ones. And lastly, the Parapsychologist who will keep the squad sane, and use their occult knowledge to fight off more mystical aspects of the Lovecraftian horrors.

Ideally, we aim to make agents more randomly generated in the final product, but we’re making a more focused demo first. Therefore, we will keep the focus on three agents first to show off our vision. These agents are The Soldier, The Medic (see above), and The Parapsychologist (coming); who also dabble in the occult.

As mentioned though, we would like to make all agents more random and even customizable in the final game, sort of like they did in the new XCOM games. Is that something you would want? Leave your preferences for agents customization in the comments!

Next agent will be the Parapsychologist, but we’ll hopefully have some other updates before that too, so stay tuned!

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One of our artists, Christer Sveen, of Funcom and Blink Studios fame, have finished the model of the first of our Agents: The Soldier.

The Soldier is a veteran from the Great War, where he served in the British navy on several different ships. One of his last duties was aboard the Q-ship Zebrina, which ended in his first encounter with the Paranormal. After leaving Falmouth in Cornwall one September morning in 1917, The Zebrina was found washed ashore on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, without any of its crew.

The Soldier never talks about what happened, but shortly after he was approached by a recruitment agent from the PIB. Since then he has been serving the world’s hidden war against the paranormal threat.

We feel we have landed on the perfect style for our agent characters with this one. What do you think?

PIB Agent: The Soldier – A veteran from The Great War (Realtime render)

Our next character is currently under modeling, so stay tuned to see what our artist comes up with next!

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We’ll update with assets as they are completed, here on our blog and also on all our social presence for the game. For those of you who haven’t seen our Steam Greenlight Concepts page yet, let me introduce to you the concept of The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau!

The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau

H.P. Lovecraft meets XCOM meets X-Files! Control The PIB and defend the world against Lovecraftian horrors. Don’t let humanity fall to the cultists, paranormal entities, and Elder Gods!

When the stars are right, the veil between our reality and others become dangerously thin. So thin that breaching through can be done with minimal effort by even the weakest of magic rituals or pseudo-scientific contraptions. These wounds of the veil allow corruption from more ominous realms to pass into our world, transforming innocent creatures into paranormal entities of legend and unleashing inexplicable horrors unto the world.

Cults of our world work to tear this veil open with obscene rituals which will summon forgotten horrors of ancient times, and to conjure up portals that could reach outside of the ordered universe, to summon the Ultimate Gods.

The only real defense against these beings, entities, and events of the paranormal is an old and ancient world-spanning order – now known as the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau (PIB). Agents recruited from around the world, fighting to rid the world of this ominous threat.

Inspired by games such as the XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics Series, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau will be a tactical turn-based game. The goal is to save the world of the roaring 20’s from a threat of paranormal nature.

From your headquarters aboard a majestic zeppelin, you control a roster of agents to combat the paranormal threat, close shut any ruptures in the veil and banish the Elder Gods themselves.

As one of the leaders of the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau, you control the Agents. People with wide variety of backgrounds, recruited to the Bureau because of their previous encounters with the Paranormal.

We might revise the roles in the future, but at the moment we’re focusing on the three roles of Soldier, Medic, and Parapsychologist.

The Agent and their Roles

• The Soldier: Usually veterans of the Great War, the Soldier is a specialist in both unarmed and armed combat. While the more ominous horrors often are impervious to physical damage, the Soldier is essential to distract any adversaries. While you work to banish the horrors from our world.
• The Medic: Specialists in both traditional medicine and experimental alchemy. Hence the Medic is the perfect support role for healing the bodies of and boosting your Agents.
• The Parapsychologist: Skilled in both the arcane & mystical and the workings of the mind & psyche. The Parapsychologist therefore takes care of any ruptures in the veil with occult rituals. And also makes sure their fellow Agents keep their sanity in the presence of eldritch horror.

In the game, you will need to defeat the paranormal seeping into our world. Such as Nightgaunts, unseen Shamblers and other unnameable and indescribable things.

And more importantly, you need to stop the many cults of the world from ripping the veil wide open. To stop them from summoning Ultimate Gods or awaken Great Old Ones, like Cthulhu, to walk the earth again.

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Here’s a collage of some of the awesome cosplay we witnessed on Torucon 2015.

Note: if you find your image on a collage and would like to have just your own image, please don’t hesitate to send us a message and we’ll get it sent to you!

Wasteland Rumble prototype at Torucon 2015

Screenshot from the Wasteland Rumble prototype

Finally, what we enjoyed the most with #torucon2015 was, of course, to see you all enjoy our released game #wastelandbarfight and the prototype for #wastelandrumble. We cannot thank you all enough for your feedback provided through reactions and by filling out questionnaires. We can only make sure to use the feedback to create games that, if you follow us, will keep entertaining you all!

Until next time,
Yours sincerely,

Team Kybernesis

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Kybernesis started up back in 2008 and were incorporated in 2013. We’ve released only one game, but have done a lot of contract work within Unity 3D and we development. But now it has sadly come to this, we’re running out of money…

Therefore we’re reaching out with this post to see if anyone have any paid contract work that need a team of game developers/designers/artists i the near future?

Skills

We can do anything within visual, interactive applications, mobile apps, websites, graphic design, etc.

Within Game Development we’ve mainly worked with Unity 3D, but also have experience with HTML5, Flash and Unreal Engine 4 in addition to game design theory, user experience and GUI.

Programming skills we have include C++, C#, Java, HTML5/CSS3/JS and PHP. We also don’t have any problem delving into other programming languages.

Graphic skills include modeling and animation with Blender, 3D Studio Max and Maya, and graphic design with Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash.

Contact us!

If you have any paid contract work, want to enter a collaboration or know someone who needs a studio with our skill set, don’t hesitate taking contact through our contact form.

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We have just launched our Corp Wars Equity Crowdfunding campaign on FundedByMe and we’ve already gotten our first investment offer! That’s awesomesauce right there!

Head on over to read more about our plans for Corp Wars and if you’re interested, feel free to add an offer to invest too!

You can also see our CEO’s live pitch at Technoport 2015 tonight. Streaming will start at 20:00 (8pm) GMT+1.

The new style of Corp Wars

Our Art Director, Ståle “RoboRogue” Tevik, landed on an awesome low-poly style that we will use in our Corp Wars games from now on! You can check out some great examples in our Corp Wars Equity Crowdfunding campaign or just check out the images below!

You’re all welcome to leave a comment about our choice of style or our Corp Wars Equity Crowdfunding campaign below :)

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We’re heading to sunny California next week! More specifically San Francisco to attend Game Connection and GDC 2015 along with tons of other Norwegian game companies! So if you’re attending any of those, be sure to stop by and say hello!

Corp Wars: Konvoy prototype

You will also have a chance to be one of the first to test out an extremely buggy, but hopefully awesome prototype of our next game in development, Corp Wars: Konvoy at Game Connection and GDC 2015 booths 248 and PL633 respectively.

Wastelander Transport from Corp Wars: Konvoy

Corp Wars: Konvoy will feature an explore-the-world mode, not unlike the Sid Meier’s Pirates games, where the cities you can visit will be populated with player cities when we release our city builder some time in the future. Until then there will still be cities to visit, but just the ones made by us.

There will also be a quick travel system, not unlike the one in FTL and Out There for those that aren’t huge fans of exploration, however some things will of course only be discoverable by exploration. The game will also feature a quest/mission system, also not unlike what FTL and Out There are doing, but with our own twist of course.

While exploring or quick travelling you will of course stumble unto raiders that want to take your hard earned money or any goods you’re transporting, but fret not, you will meet them prepared! You Konvoy transports can be mounted with cannon turrets and beside your transports you will have smaller attack vehicles ready to defend the Konvoy with just gesture from your finger. The combat mode is mainly inspired by Strikefleet Omega, but we’re of course adding our own twist there too.

As you most likely figured already, Corp Wars: Konvoy is deeply inspired by games like Sid Meier’s Pirates, FTL, Out There and Strikefleet Omega, and I also must add that the just released Sunless Sea also managed to add some ideas to our concept over the last couple weeks.

Wasteland Bar Fight

And we will of course have an Android tablet dedicated to Wasteland Bar Fight at both Game Connection and GDC 2015 booths. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you should head on over to Google Play and try it out! It’s completely free with ads.

We will bring the tablet with us on the countless parties during Game Connection and GDC 2015 too, so there will be ample chances to relieve some aggression with Wasteland Bar Fight instead of starting real bar fights.

Wasteland Bar Fight can even handle the puking for you if you drink too much!

Hope to see you at Game Connection and GDC 2015! :D

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