I'm Robert. I produced Liberated. I first dreamt of making it around 30 years ago and seeing it out feels unreal.
Liberated is a game. It's also a comic book. Let me explain how it started.
When I was a kid, back in the 80’s, my homeland Poland was a gloomy place. It was an enslaved country ruled by a strange, sad military guy. I guess I escaped into comics. At first, these were rather crude Polish comics: Tytus or Kapitan Żbik. Later came the good stuff, like Expedition and Funky Koval.
Soon I was reading everything, from Donald Duck to Punisher, from Thorgal to Batman. This was right after the system changed and suddenly we got access to all kinds of colorful American stories. I was into them so much that I sometimes dreamt about them.
(I shit you not, I still sometimes dream I’m in a comic book store and can’t afford anything - I have had this traumatic dream since childhood!)
Anyway, in one dream, after I watched Tim Burton's Batman, the panels moved like a film. This stuck with me for some time and then I forgot about it.
Years passed and then I saw... Harry Potter. You remember these moving photos from the films?
That's when I remembered my moving comic idea. And since by that time I was into gaming, I wished I could make a game like that. But it seemed impossible, not with early 2000s' technology, to create what I had in mind. Not just a game with some comic book elements, but a realistically rendered comic with moving panels.
After all, games back then looked like this:
So I stopped thinking about it.
Around 3 years ago I met Marek, who worked on games. We talked and he told me about his idea for a dystopian story-driven game. I noticed it's a bit similar to V for Vendetta, and a lightbulb lit in my head. A comic book with moving panels! Moreover, with panels YOU CONTROL.
Over 2.5 years, we poured our soul into making this game. At first, it was supposed to be a pixelart title, but it didn't work, it wasn't what I had in mind.
We then switched to a totally hand-drawn 2D game as you can see above. But it was still too simple, it didn't really suit the dystopian themes. We wanted the game to be noir, like Frank Miller's comics.
And so we arrived at a mix of 2D and 3D. I thought it looked JUST RIGHT! It's rendered as a fully realistic comic, you can even see the shine on the pages.
Gameplay-wise, it's a side-scrolling action adventure. This genre worked best for the formula. Stages couldn't be too long, controls too complex. We wanted to make the game not only look, but FEEL like a comic.
Today, Liberated is here on PC and Switch, and this feels just unreal. It's literally a dream come true!
I'm trying to say that you should never give up on your dreams. Maybe in 30 years, you'll get a chance to make them happen.
Thanks for reading!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/875310/Liberated/