Demo offers first glimpse into The Cerpan Project

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Kickstarter coming soon for Spanish-dubbed, hand-drawn point-and-click adventure

Most experiment-gone-wrong games take place in the setting where said experiment has already wreaked havoc or is still in the middle of a causing chaos. Red Monkey Studio's upcoming The Cerpan Project takes a different approach to solving such a dilemma, unceremoniously dropping you into the middle of a bizarre little seaside town instead.

It's 1960, and deep inside a top-secret research facility in the Soviet Union, the mysterious "Project Cerpan" is underway. But as such things are wont to do, the experiment being conducted goes seriously wrong and "something strange starts to happen." Players control Red Salazar, who abruptly finds himself in the quaint Calle Larga with no memory of the place. What do Red and the "peculiar citizens" of this town have to do with Project Cerpan? That's for you (and perhaps Red) to discover, because the project "must survive at all costs,” and saving it will require not only learning everything you can about its dark secrets, but also discovering what happened to all the people involved.

Inspired by the genre classics, The Cerpan Project is a traditional point-and-click adventure in most respects, with hand-drawn graphics, a simple two-button interface, a cast of unusual characters to meet, and a host of items to collect, combine, and use to solve risk-free puzzles. But as you explore different locations like the local pet shop, the library/"safe place" run by a paranoid librarian, and the not-at-all-busy Sober Pirate café owned by the teetotalling Beardlatte, a couple of unique features stand out. Not only are the cartoony graphics centered in the middle of the screen with thick black borders on all sides, but all dialogue is dubbed in its original Spanish (though with English subtitles), giving you a chance to brush up on your español while you’re at it.

There is no target release date for The Cerpan Project just yet, as the two-person development team plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign soon to help finance the rest of production, which you can register for now to be notified when it goes live. In the meantime, you can get a first taste of what to expect in the playable demo (still a work in progress), available now on Steam (Windows only) and itch.io for Windows and Mac.

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