Nibris doing Rev noir game

By Tom Bramwell Published 13 April, 2006

Inspired by Sin City.

Polish developer Nibris says it's working on a film noir inspired game for Nintendo Revolution, although it hasn't said much else - with a publisher, release date, and even gameplay specifics absent from its announcement.

Still, we know it's called "Sadness" and that Nibris considers films like Sin City to be its inspiration - in fact, the whole game will be done in black and white, the developer says.

We also know that it'll be set "pre-World War", so don't expect any depression/prohibition nonsense, although you might get to complain disgustedly about the sight of an inch of ankle I suppose.

Of course Sadness isn't the only Revolution game we've heard about this week - Ubisoft's also got one, called Red Steel, which will see you swinging a katana around as well as firing guns using the Revolution's remote-style controller.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • quantumsheep #1 6 years ago

    cool - B&W graphics =)

  • Ace_McCloud #2 6 years ago

    Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I say...

    Btw quantumsheep you forgot to say "FIIIIIIRRRRRRRST!!!!!". you should probably edit that.

  • quantumsheep #3 6 years ago

    Thanks for the reminder, but I'm not a cunt ;)

  • Psi #4 6 years ago

    noir films have to have been shot in the 1940-50's anything else would be neo-noir.

    I'm assuming the game will have a feme fetale in there somewhere.

    either way, can't wait to see more info on this.

  • BurnoutJunkie #5 6 years ago

    Does this even count? These guys could be anyone...anybody can say they have a game in the works for Revolution and not have a publisher etc.

  • Freek #6 6 years ago

    Weird, from the art and little tit bitts of info floating round it looked like a ghothic inspired survival horror game.
    The only thing it would have in common with Sin City is that it's black and white.

  • manic_mouse #7 6 years ago

    Not only will black and white graphics look really rather cool, but I'm assuming the textures will take up less space and mean this game will look stunning. Hooray!

  • Dizzy #8 6 years ago

    "Not only will black and white graphics look really rather cool, but I'm assuming the textures will take up less space "

    ???

    Less space where? On disk? In memory?

    Flat Polygons would make a game look stunning!

    (actually we can debate about that... there are people who claim that textures will eventually go the way of the dodo and be replaced by super high polygon models but that is not the point of my rather witty joke ;)

  • peterfll #9 6 years ago

    Well, you could just try and play Super Mario 64 with the colour turned down.

  • kangarootoo #10 6 years ago

    @Dizzy

    Its not an unreasonable point to make (though I'm not sure if manic_mouse was serious or not). Going mono will allow you to drop the colour depth a bit with little effect on appearance, which in turn would save memory. Do consoles generally require a specific colour depth for textures (in which case, there would be no saving to be made)?

    IF it was feasible, then the answer to your own question would be both (but I suspect it isn't).


    "there are people who claim that textures will eventually go the way of the dodo and be replaced by super high polygon models"

    Those same people would probably argue that increases in production efficiency will allow us to all work a 10 hour week. In the capitilist world in which we live, there is a subtle but total flaw in that way of thinking, which I'm sure you can spot.
    Edited by 1 at 13/04/06 @ 16:06

  • smelly #11 6 years ago

    Lets just wait until we see it shall we?

  • feinry #12 6 years ago

    they should rather be inspired by the comics. the film was a weak and tasteless copy
    though, i applause to the BW graphics, but i doubt they will do it

  • kangarootoo #13 6 years ago

    "the film was a weak and tasteless copy"

    You should probably mentione that to Frank miller, who was co-credited with direction. He seemed quite pleased with it.

  • space_ace #14 6 years ago

    i can't stand sin city

    why not work with the killing or double indemnity, where film noir is something much more profound than boys with toys (and hd cameras).

    indeed there are great modern noir titles - femme fatale, minority report and demonlover, but that's too much of a slippery slope...

  • manic_mouse #15 6 years ago

    kangarootoo, that is exactly what I meant and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the case.

  • space_ace #16 6 years ago

    argh i read the article

    turns out it's inspired by 40s noir, not by sin city! that's more like it :)

  • kangarootoo #17 6 years ago

    @manic_mouse

    My only thought is that consoles may have specific requirements for their texture pages to be handled by the GPU. If a console demands 256x256 pages (or divisiojns thereof) at a 32 bit colour depth, you wouldn't be able to but the depth of your grey scale to save on memory. But I don't know either way what restrictions they make.

    OK, I just turned around and asked a coder, as this got me intrigued. It really depends on whether your system supports a 16 or 32 bit greyscale mode (the PS2 doesn't for example). If it doesn't, the bits you use to store your greyscale textures are still arranged in RGB values you use to store full colour, so you can't make any saving on memory as all your greyscale values are being stored in RGB format.

    If you could use the full 16 bits simply to store brightness values (if I understand correctly), you could then hugely increase the number of grey shades available, allowing you in turn to provide groovy textures even though you are in 16 bit instead of 32.

    I'm not a coder, so some of this may have gone wrong in translation.

    Everyone else can wake back up now ;)

  • Lost_in_Darkness #18 6 years ago

    From what I've heard, Nibris doesn't even have a dev kit yet. They also have another game planned for Rev called Raid over the River, which was submitted to NOE but wasn't picked up. They also have a planned DS game; for which they also have no dev kit. All of them are being made on PC in the hopes of getting picked up.....who know's if whatever publisher finally(if ever) picks them up would even want to make the games for the Rev or DS.
    Have fun waiting for this one guys, that's all I'm saying.


  • smelly #19 6 years ago

    OK, I just turned around and asked a coder, as this got me intrigued. It really depends on whether your system supports a 16 or 32 bit greyscale mode (the PS2 doesn't for example).

    I think you'll find that (due to lack of memory) most ps2 textures are 8 bit paletised (i.e. 256 colour), which if you were doing a greyscale game would in theory be more than enough.

    HOWEVER, the point of a film noir isnt the texturing at all, but the moody lighting.

    If I was generating a moder film noir scene in maya, the graphical effects would be quite complex, I wouldnt use grey scale textures, but a near grey look on all the colours - so (presuming the revo is the same as the cube) I wouldnt use 8 bit palettised to save memory, i'd use full colour 32bit textures then S3 texture compression to fit them in, then control the scenes "noir"-esque look by fancy lighting effects (ala sin city - close to black and white - but not actually black and white), which as i'm using high quality textures will now be nicely portrayed.


    .. IF you guys insist on talking tech, i can outdo all of you (and still know what im talking about), i've dumbed down the above for you to understand. But if you insist on keep talking about stuff you know nothing about - feel free.


    BUT I've never heard of nibris, so sod knows what the quality of their products is like.

  • pb64_uk #20 6 years ago

    "Sadness"?

    Lame title.

  • Ace_McCloud #21 6 years ago

    Jesus, this thread did well in bringing out the pretentious 'i studied a bit of noir and now i'm gonna flaunt it' folk...

  • peak_performance #22 6 years ago

    @Lost_In_Darkness
    the way I've understood it they have since then picked up a publisher, changed Raid over the River to the DS-platform and probably gotten themselves a Revdevkit as well. But I could be mixing them up with some other company about the Rev-thing, the DS thing and the publisher thing I am sure of however.
    Edited by 1 at 14/04/06 @ 00:33

  • #23 6 years ago

    vaporware

  • Freek #24 6 years ago

    Sadness is just the working title.

  • Azu87 #25 6 years ago

    NIBRIS didn't have dev kits at first, but now they have a publisher for their games. They actually had Gamecube dev kits at some point, and because of the publisher I think they've gotten a Rev one by now (at least a beta one if the final/almost final ones have been given to some bigger publishers/developers).

    About the games of Nibris, well: Raid Over the River will be released for the DS AND Revolution. The DS version will be released by the end of this year, no word about the Revolution version.

    Of course they have also this game (Sadness), and they've announced it will be released in 2007, so not any time soon.

    I think NIBRIS had also one more title coming up, but I don't remember what was it about (either it was a RPG or an adventure game)

  • asphaltcowboy #26 6 years ago

    smelly: are you a maya user?

    It's a shameless plug, but it is relevant: <a href=http://www.daniel-lim.co .uk>http://www.daniel-lim.co .uk</a>

  • kangarootoo #27 6 years ago

    @smelly

    "IF you guys insist on talking tech, i can outdo all of you (and still know what im talking about)"

    Man, you were doing just fine there being all informative. And then you had to show off because visitors were round. Anyway, its horses for courses mate. I had a previous life before I moved into games and there are techy things I could bamboozle you with depending on the subject matter. So don't let your hat size get too excessive eh ;)

  • nightsparkle #28 6 years ago

    great! 2 FPS's already (i presume). LET'S JUST HOPE these won't be the the only two worth buying during the rev's lifespan

  • smelly #29 6 years ago

    @kangarootoo : It was more a point that people were talking techy stuff without knowing waht they were talking about.

    It's like me talking about erm something when i dont have any idea on the subject .. erm.. like english metaphores!