Today we are proud to release The Captives: Plot of the Demiurge on Steam after over a year and a half of production. This is our first commercial game since releasing the award winning Portal Stories: Mel.
The Captives: Plot of the Demiurge is a game set in a fantasy world and features Souls-like combat mechanics, compelling storytelling and the ability to customise a new character before each new level. However, in a unique twist, after completing a level all your previously customised characters continue to exist within the game world. Thus, rather than a single protagonist, you will be developing a whole cast of characters to interact with throughout the game!
Key Features
Character customisation of appearance, stats and weapons
Souls-like combat
Levelling choices in each dungeon
Focus on storytelling
Replayability
Replay the game with special Challenge Runs, combinations of unique modifiers to the game.
These include Roguelike Challenge which randomizes your build each time you play through the dungeons and Soul Challenge which restricts the number of checkpoints in the game and changes how healing works.
With a variety of individual modifiers you can also tweak the game to create your own challenge runs or make things a little easier if you get stuck.
About Us
Prism Studios is a small video game company based in Northern Ireland. In 2015, we released the Portal Stories: Mel mod for Valve’s Portal 2 game which was downloaded by over 1 million unique users. Now we are hoping to follow that success with our current project, The Captives: Plot of the Demiurge.
Getting this game to the finish line has been a challenge, especially since we are a tiny team trying to transition from the creation of an award-winning mod to a commercial product. Working without any budget or outside investment for over a year and half means that this project has been very much a labour of love!
You can keep up to date with our projects via
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PrismStudiosUK
The Captives: Plot of the Demiurge store page online now!
Hey everyone,
We're happy to announce that we've launched our Steam Store page for our upcoming game The Captives: Plot of the Demiurge. You can add the game to your wishlist and follow the page to keep up-to-date with the development of the game there.
We're incredibly excited to announce that we've made the leap from mod team to an indie studio!
Recently we've started to work on our first brand new game!
The game is called The YR-Initiative !
The YR-Initiative is a VR first person puzzle game with a strong narrative, based around solving puzzles simultaneously alongside robot companions who you direct about the map to help you complete tasks, retrieve objects etc. The game takes place in the future, you are part of an advanced AI tasked with fixing your space station after it suffered damage during a meteor storm that has wiped out life on Earth. You will do training puzzles before going down to and fix the station. We're still very early in production so we don't have too many more details to share with you!
This game was called DR01D earlier in development, resulting in the old name on the image
We did an interview with Games NI, where you can get a bit more information about The YR-Initiative and the team:
http://gamesni.com/news/2016/8/17/prism-studios
Feel free to follow us on our social media:
https://www.facebook.com/PrismStudiosUK
https://twitter.com/prismstudiosUK
And for The YR-Initiative specifically:
https://www.facebook.com/theYRInitiative/
https://twitter.com/YRInitiative
Portal Stories: VR - OUT NOW!!!
Hey Everyone!
We're incredibly excited to announce that we just released Portal Stories: VR!
It is a brand new mini story set in the Portal Universe. It features 10 brand new puzzles, specifically designed to work using the 360 degrees room scale that SteamVR offers.
Inside Aperture, you'll be able to use the new "Aperture Science Instant Teleportation Device" and the "Aperture Science Apparatus Retrieval Tool" to solve the new tests.
Powered by Unreal Engine 4, Portal Stories: VR gives the Aperture Science facility a whole fresh look. With new models, textures, particles and more!
We're doing an AMA on Reddit!
If you have any questions about the game and it's development, feel free to ask it over at Reddit!
Click here to ask us anything!
Portal Stories: VR releasing May 17th!
Hey everyone!
We're very excited to announce that despite a few setbacks, we're releasing Portal Stories: VR on Tuesday May 17th 2016! Portal Stories: VR is a brand new mini campaign in which you get to explore a whole new part of the Aperture Science Facility. Solve 10 new puzzles to complete the Aperture Science VR Training, using two new devices! Portal Stories: VR is specifically designed to be used with the SteamVR motion controls and makes full use of the 360 roomscale experience. An HTC Vive is required in order to play.
For clarity we'd like to stress that we are not related to Valve Software. Valve did not develop this game, and as such is not an official game by Valve nor endorsed by them. The game takes place in a world initially created by Valve and as such, we do not claim to own any of the IP.
This is already stated quite clearly on the Store page, and we try to communicate this as best as possible, but there are still people who have missed this. Initially Valve requested us to change the name, since some people mistook our game as being official. After discussing this clarity issue with Valve, we came to an agreement to retain the name and instead the decision has been made to tag Portal Stories: VR as a Portal 2 mod. This means that our store page of Portal Stories: VR is in line with that of Portal Stories:Mel. It should be clear for everyone that this is a mod for Portal 2, and that it’s not made by Valve. This also means that you'll have to own a copy of Portal 2 on Steam in order to play Portal Stories: VR, you do not need to have Portal 2 installed on your computer.
That all being said, we’re looking forward to hearing your reactions to our new tests! Press copies will be released soon, so reviews should be available shortly.
Important Announcement!
Hey everyone,
Today we got informed by Valve that there are issues with the name Portal Stories:VR. We've been requested to change the name of our game. At this point we're not sure yet what we're going to call it, but we're in talks with Valve to resolve this issue as soon as possible.
Unfortunately this also means that we'll have to delay the release of the game again. We still plan to release as soon as possible, but it's going to take some more time. We have to agree on a new name, change all of our promotional assets and make some adjustments in the game itself.
EDIT May 7:
We have resolved the issue. Instead of changing the name, Portal Stories:VR is now tagged as a Portal 2 mod. You'll need a copy of Portal 2 in your Steam library in order to play Portal Stories: VR (You do NOT need it installed)
We're postponing the release of Portal Stories: VR
Hey everyone!
We've been incredibly hard at work over the past few weeks, creating Portal Stories:VR. Our goal was to release the game with the launch of the Vive on the 5th.
Unfortunately we've come to the conclusion that we won't be able to get this game done at the high quality you've come to expect from us. Therefore we have decided to take some more time to polish the game. This means Portal Stories: VR will be releasing at a later date. We don't know exactly when yet, but we plan to release it as soon as possible!
Here's a screenshot of one of the levels:
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below!
