The day has finally arrived! Episode 1 of Cannibal Tales is now available on Steam! We're thrilled to have brought the first part of this project to life, despite countless challenges. This is just the beginning of a larger journey: two more visual novel episodes are set for release in 2025, and a 3D survival horror game is planned for 2026.
We're deeply sorry we couldn't share this moment with the master Ruggero Deodato, but we believe releasing the game on his birthday is a fitting tribute to him.
We hope you enjoy the game, and we eagerly await your feedback on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/Bk6wRBmNkA.
The next steps include the Switch and PlayStation releases, as well as localization into other languages.
We'll keep you updated.
That's all for now. The Cannibal Team
Continuing the Legacy: Introducing Cannibal Tales
Hello Deoedato lovers, As we said in our previous post, our collaboration with Ruggero Deodato continues in a new form: Cannibal Tales.
This horror thriller visual novel offers a gripping story where every choice matters. Will you brave the journey? Experience the darkness and wishlist the game now!
We have an important announcement regarding our collaboration with Ruggero Deodato. Despite his unexpected passing 5 months ago, we have decided to continue the project in a new form: Cannibal Tales.
As you may know, Ruggero was the main investor in our ongoing project, Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare. Unfortunately, due to a lack of funds, the development has been halted. We have attempted to secure funding by pitching the project to publishers and private investors, but so far we have been unsuccessful. We do not have the necessary resources to complete the required vertical slice.
Therefore, we have made the decision to change direction and return to the original idea of our collaboration with Ruggero Deodato. We will create a visual novel using the master's unpublished screenplay, and the project will be called Cannibal Tales. The story will be divided into three parts, with different protagonists whose stories are intricately intertwined, and the theme of cannibalism will always be present in various forms and aspects.
Cannibal Tales will be a game consisting of three episodes:
1- The Interview 2- The Embalmer 3- Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare
The project has sustainable development costs for our studio, and we plan to release the first episode by Winter 2023.
Our hope is that the sales of the first two episodes will enable us to find the necessary funds to complete the third and final episode, "Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare," while maintaining the same artistic direction and gameplay that we were pursuing with Ruggero Deodato.
In the coming months, we will provide more information about the project.
Don't forget to support the project by adding the game to your Steam wishlist:
Hello everyone, last hours to play the demo. It will be available until November 29th at 09:00 CET. Thanks to all of you for the feedback received.
A new devlog is coming very soon. Stay tuned
Steam Scream Fest
Hello everyone, we have an important announcement for you: “Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare” will be part of the Steam Scream Fest. Starting on Tuesday 26 it will be possible to play a small but very scary demo we have been working on in the last months.
We take this opportunity to make a brief recap on the state of development in order to update all the people who support the game and who ask us if there is any news about it.
Since we announced our collaboration with Ruggero Deodato to make a video game based on his original script in April 2020, a lot of things happened during the development of the project, changing the original idea of the game for better or for worse.
Originally the game was a visual novel called "Cannibal", made in collaboration with the Italian artist SOLOMACELLO. The game would be completed by the end of 2020. We saw a lot of interest in our game after the announcement of the project, so we decided to change the gameplay following player feedback (from visual novel to graphic adventure). We spent months working on a demo, and the result was fine but after careful consideration, we decided that Ruggero Deodato deserves something better.
In the meantime, we were forced to change the title of the game because it was too similar to the title of Deodato's cult movie, Cannibal Holocaust, and could have created legal problems for us. We decided to call it "Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare" given the strong emotional bond between Ruggero Deodato and that geographical area and because, obviously, the game is partly set on that magnificent island.
The new game title unexpectedly unleashes the anger of many natives of Borneo, convinced that our project would throw mud and slander on the traditions of the island by feeding those false Western stereotypes that see the indigenous natives described as primitive populations. But the plot of our game is exactly the opposite. “Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare” is a critique of Western society, capable of carrying out the worst acts in order to create individual profit.
Unfortunately, like many of our colleagues, we had to stop production during the months of lockdown due to the covid pandemic. We have therefore arrived at 2021. As a consequence of the pandemic, our company has found itself in economic difficulties. We have been forced to pause "Borneo's" development to focus on smaller projects that can monetize faster.
As a result, over the past year, we've finished developing 2 games, published 6 indie games, and ported 8 titles to consoles. We can finally get back to work on Borneo and this time in an even more ambitious way. The game is now a first-person 3D horror adventure game.
We have a new team, full of talented people like the Italian artist Gabriele Granocchia (take a look at his Instagram page), and we have a new roadmap that foresees the end of the development by the beginning of 2024.
We’ve spent the last 3 months working on a demo that showed you our new game idea. We hope that you like it. We are also looking for financial partners that can help us to improve the quality of the game.
Don't forget to join our Discord Server and leave us your feedback!
Thanks to all of you for the support received in these difficult years. "Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare" is a project we care a lot about and which we hope can continue to feed the legend of one of the greatest Italian cult directors, Ruggero Deodato.
Weekly Devlog #3
Hello guys, A new weekly devlog is here!
In the game's main story, during the rescue expedition in Borneo, Alessandro, the protagonist, experiences real nightmares with his eyes open. He is poisoned with a substance that causes hallucinations.
The player is frightened by different events like walking in the shadows or encountering an enemy. While the player is getting scared an icon fills up. When this fear icon is completely filled up, the player reaches a state of terror and he is thrown into a new map. The landscape will change from the jungle of Borneo to the narrow alleys of a city.
In this video, you can see a work in progress of the visual transition.
More info about gameplay mechanics coming soon. Stay tuned!
See you next week, Borneo Team
Weekly Devlog #2
Hello guys, A new weekly devlog is here!
In the game, the player will relive the fate of an unfortunate expedition to Borneo. The story is mainly set in two places: the jungle of Borneo and the streets of a big American city.
Following community feedback, we changed the visual style and gameplay from a 2D point-and-click adventure to a 3D horror-action-adventure game.
In our last devlog we focused on the Jungle, so today we want to show you some pictures of the city (it is wip material!). As you can see, we're focusing on shaders, trying to get the visual style that Deodato has in mind.
These images are taken from a specific gameplay mode. In the next devlog we will give you more information about it and the other game mechanics of Borneo.
See you next week, Borneo Team
Weekly Devlog #1
Hello guys, A new weekly devlog is here!
Many associates the narrative technique of found footage with the film Blair Witch Project, not knowing that it was invented by Ruggero Deodato, who first used it in his famous cult movie "Cannibal holocaust".
We want to use the same technique in Borneo. The game's main character received a mysterious videotape, by watching it he will uncover the truth about the fate of an expedition that traveled to Borneo in search of the last cannibals.
As you can see in the video, we are working to recreate the same look of a 90's VHS.
From the next devlog, we will begin to say a little more about the game's storyline.
Please support the development. Let your friends know about the project, and add the game to your wishlist.
See you next week, Borneo Team
BORNEO DEVLOG #10 - REBOOT
Hi everyone, Fantastico Studio here.
The last few months have been very difficult due to personal problems related to Maestro Ruggero Deodato, which have kept him away from the project for most of the time.
All this has, unfortunately, led to a big slowdown in the production of the game and on the roadmap we had initially planned and has forced us to re-plan a new one based on the slowdown we had in these months and, in the same way, to re-plan a new release date.
By the way, we didn't stop. We are currently focused on the finalisation of a demo - still in Italian, but in the process of being localised - which will be shown in the next few months. We will look for a publisher to collaborate for better communication of the project.
In the new demo, we have been working on changing the fonts used in the project, as well as fixing and refining some UI elements such as:
Conversations
Dialogues
Pause Menu
Inventory
QTE
Collectables and Notebook
In the scenes of Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare there are collectables that the player must find and collect. The items are used to determine the possibility of unlocking additional content at the end of the game and are represented in-game as snapshots taken by our characters.
The photos of the collectables will then be collected and displayed in one of the Notebook sections.
The Notebook, presented in one of the last devlogs, is an indispensable tool for the player, and contains 3 different sections:
Scenes - in this section the player can document himself with a small summary of the scenes already played or decide to replay a specific scene
Characters - keeps track of the characters met during the game and provides information through a short bio
Collectables - gallery of collectables collected in the game by the player
Acts and New Roadmap
Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare is a game divided into 3 Acts that contain playable scenes. Currently, in Fantastico Studio we are finalizing Act I, which we expect to finish by next July.
NEW ROADMAP
ACT I - July 2021
ACT II - December 2021
ACT III - March 2022
POLISHING & QA - April 2022
PUBLICATION - May 2022
We end this Devlog Reboot with a couple more information.
The first one concerns our participation in the Steam Game Fests, for which we are deciding whether to attend the ones scheduled for next October or to go directly to the ones at the beginning of 2022.
The second news is that from now on, Devlogs will be offered every 3 weeks to fully concentrate on development in the meantime.
Thank you all for your attention, and see you in the next devlog!
BORNEO DEVLOG #9
Welcome to a new Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare devlog.
In the previous Devlog we told you that we were working with Ruggero Deodato on a Demo of Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare: well, the Demo is finally ready and has been tested even by the Director himself! Please note: the text you'll see on the screen is in Italian, but the game will obviously be localised in the final version.
[previewyoutube="2SCYdLGuCEw;full"]
As you can see from the video, the work is proceeding very well, together with Ruggero Deodato himself who is putting a lot of his own energy into it.
We are working non-stop to provide you with the best possible cannibal experience. Also - surprise! - we are trying to make the Demo available for the next Steam Game Festival, so stay tuned!
Get ready for a cannibalistic summer 💀
Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare. Coming Summer 2021 on Steam
