A Most Honorable Bunch
By Osmotic Studios
Funded with 72,000 €
Prototype Funding 2024
A Most Honorable Bunch is a narrative heist game that captures the spirit of gangster films such as “Reservoir Dogs” or “The Usual Suspects” in game form. The game tells a story about five more or less dubious characters who meet - seemingly by chance - on a long-abandoned island. Only they themselves know the reason that drove them here. But none of them can shake off the feeling that the others are also looking for something from the past of this “lost place” - and will go to any lengths to find it.
About the Game
The game puts players in the role of each of the five characters in turn. The aim is to fulfill their own “agenda”, their reason for being on the island, and to prevent the other characters from fulfilling their (initially hidden) one. Players are given the greatest possible freedom as to how they want to proceed: They can explore the island, take items with them and use them in other places, trade them, spy on other characters, manipulate them ... or get rid of them altogether. The non-player characters are controlled by a complex simulation that takes their emotional state into account among other factors.
A round ends when one of the characters has fulfilled their agenda. The story can then be relived from the perspective of another character. During each round, the players collect information and learn how they can fulfill the agendas of the individual characters. Over the course of several rounds, an overall storyline emerges, narrated by two detectives who try to make sense of the chaos on the island, constantly spinning and discarding theories to figure out what really went down.
The Team
Osmotic Studios is an award-winning independent game development company based in Hamburg, founded in 2014 by Melanie Taylor, Daniel Marx and Michael Kluge after graduating from HAW Hamburg with a degree in the so called “Games Master” course. Always striving to explore new ways to tell an immersive interactive story, the company focuses on narrative games told through unique game mechanics. The team currently consists of seven employees as well as the freelance duo Knaddersound (Mathilde Hoffmann and Felix Barbarino) for the audio department.
Osmotic Studios' best-known work is the debut Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You, published in 2016, which won the German Computer Game Award in the “Best Serious Game” category, among others. The follow-up title Orwell: Ignorance is Strength was released in 2018. Since 2020, Osmotic Studios has been working on the new development Closer the Distance, a narrative life-sim that is expected to be released in 2024.
