About
“Devoid of purpose, we can only strive to find our own.”
As a little robot, you awake in a twisted mechanical uterus. With no instructions, you embark on a quest to discover the mysterious world you were born into, the events that led to your birth, and, eventually, yourself.
SYSTOLE is a breathtaking adventure that blends acrobatic challenges and exploration in a 2.5D platformer. It is currently being developed for PC, PS4, Xbox One and WiiU.
Wielding the power of magnetism, you’ll be able to swing from poles, attach to various surfaces and repel yourself from platforms while devising fast and clever ways to overcome challenges and hostiles that stand before you.
During your journey, you’ll come across fragments of past robots’ memories that will show you glimpses of history, pieces that will add up to reveal larger forces at play, and your place within them.
SYSTOLE is an acrobatic 2.5D platformer. It's all about maintaining your coordination as you switch polarities in order to attach, attract, repulse objects or repel yourself from them while exploring the vast intricacies of the Mother World.
Inspired by the storytelling of Limbo, the acrobatics of Prince of Persia and Mega Man's structure, SYSTOLE is a game that immerses players into a deep story filled with fast challenges that will test even the most focused minds!
GAMEPLAY
“Unlike poles attract, like poles repel”
Magnetism is at the core of SYSTOLE. In the game, you'll be able to trigger your positive or negative magnetic fields, while objects in the world have their own magnetic polarities. By coordinating whether to attract or repel yourself from them, you will be able to traverse the world, access new paths, use enemies as weapons, shields or vehicles, and much more!
The Mother World is a vast mechanism and the setting of SYSTOLE. You first wake up in the ruins of the Heart Temple, a giant mechanical heart at the core of the Mother World. As you explore farther away from the Heart, you will come across wonderful places, and mechanical perversions of humanity:
-A stomach foundry, where the Mother World melts and builds everything within her. Grab and throw objects to access new paths and defeat enemies!
-A cooling system, spreading freezing currents like a lung. Control temperature to block enemies and access new areas!
-The Encephalon: at the highest part of the Mother World, a huge array of coils and antennae process every thought in the Mother World. Through the use of synaptics, you’ll be able to teleport through walls and obstacles.
-The Heart Temple, a place of reverence and the power source of the Mother World.
Even with such basic mechanics as switching between polarities, there are tons of possibilities and ideas we would like to implement! So we thought of a way to better explain the numerous additions for the stretch goals: The Game Model. At 65k, 90k, 95k and 125k marks, you will see a new Game Model.
Game Models encompass improvements to the main aspects of the game (bosses, levels, etc.), while stretch goals between them add new features around the core gameplay. Game Model includes:
-Scope: How many levels there are, their size and the number of enemies and interactive assets in the game.
-Special encounters: How many Bosses and/or Midbosses you face in the course of the game.
-Overhauls: improvement in quality and polish of the game. Each Game Model includes a general overhaul in graphics, sound, animation and VFX. In some Game Models, new features are introduced.
COCO Collective Consciousness consists of some of the greatest minds in the Venezuelan scene, joined together by their desire to make engaging games that plant seeds of thought into the minds of gamers.
COCO Collective Consciousness is about the transmutation of entertainment into enlightenment.
Vel ~ Jorge Veloso
Producer/Game designer/Environment Artist
Jorge Veloso is an artist and systems designer with a decade of experience in software development. He’s been teaching part time in top graphic institutes and universities in Venezuela. He is currently the producer and environment designer of Systole, and has worked in games like El Canto del Autana and an unannounced SilverMile project.
Korta ~ Jorge Orta
Composer/ Sound designer
Jorge Orta is a virtuoso with a sleep disorder that compels him to learn new things every day. His skills include composition, interpretation, arrangements, mixing, editing and programming, all of which he includes in a flawless workflow for designing every audio aspect of the game. He has previously worked on El Canto del Autana, Klaus and unannounced SilverMile projects.
Check out these tracks for SYSTOLE!
Lord Wilhelm ~ Guillermo Cartay
Concept Artist
Lord Wilhelm is one of the most skilled artists in Venezuela. His work includes the cover art for “Jailbait” and “Jaimito” comics, the winning entry of Megaman X contest by Archie, and has also worked for seven years as one of the key professors of 3D and illustration at the Caracas Design Institute(IDC).
Dragon Raine ~ Verónica Mazzaro
3D Art/Assistant Concept Artist
Vero is a highly skilled artist with a productivity index off the charts! She takes on the bulk of 3D assets and textures and still manages to keep the team filled with cute pictures of puppies and kitties!
Jacoconut ~ Jacobo Pineda
Lead Animator
Jacobo is a talented animator in charge of bringing the Mother World and characters within it to life. His background includes animation, illustration and graphic design for short films, animated series and TV spots.
Set Israel Ortiz
Lead Programmer
Set is our hands-on multitasking coding maestro. Born in a family of professors, he’s a teacher in his own academy of Web Programming. Right now he’s creating and handling every aspect of SYSTOLE’s code.
Nelson Acosta
VFX and FMV artist
Trained from Argentina to Venezuela, Nelson is a skilled VFX wizard, and the one in charge of Systole’s documentary. He has worked for TV commercials and FMVs for El Canto del Autana.
SYSTOLE has been 4 months in production, 7 months since the project began and 4 years since the story was first written. All this time we have been running on the fuel of our own passion for the game, and the belief that it’s story is something we MUST share with the world, but there is only so much we can make this way... Venezuela is currently going through economic difficulties that prevents us from working on SYSTOLE while making ends meet at the same time, so we ask for your help in order to make our vision of this game come to reality.
By completing SYSTOLE, we also aim to generate trust within our country so a videogame industry may be established here, a goal for which many of our team and community members have worked so hard to achieve.
On the Bright side, these economic difficulties have also meant the opportunity for us to ask for less resources for the game than most people would need in other countries. This also means we can make high quality rewards for lower prices than usual! This translates into juicier reward tiers for you, and the opportunity to offer THE most awesome reward ever offered in Kickstarter!: A chance for you to meet the team in the most exotic locations of Venezuela. we'll travel together through natural monuments unique to the Venezuelan geography. Unlike much of what you usually see in Kickstarter, these rewards also include accommodation, local transportation, food, and insurance! Let's make a journey together as we share thoughts and skills in this one-in-a-lifetime experience!
*International travel expenses not included.
A Limited Collector’s edition of the SYSTOLE Comic Book. It will feature an alternate cover, plus the pencil sketches and script.
A T-Shirt of any size. You may select between many designs:
A Poster signed by the team.
A Limited Poster printed in Canvas and signed to you by Lord Wilhelm and the rest of the team!
Have you noticed this kind of reward is usually handled awkwardly, and often breaks immersion in your game? Well, we found a way to place 20 faces of our backers into the game in a way that will enhance the atmosphere of a climactic part of the storyline!
Collaborate with us in many different ways! Voting will give you access to polls we’ll be using to decide certain aspects of the game. Other ways include helping us design a Room, a Boss, a Level Section, a Hidden Area and finally, collaborate by introducing your very own Easter Egg!
Receive personal assessment through Skype from the team member of your choice. This assessment may be a class in a particular discipline of videogame development (programming, marketing, production, art, animation or sound!). Personal assessment may also be used if you want us to help you or coach you on a project of your own.
Help us design one of the masks that players will be able to wear from the beginning of the game! We will print and send you a 3D mask painted with YOUR design!
A high quality, limited large size(11.8") hand painted model of the little robot. Each statue is signed and numbered. This is the ultimate collector's item!
An important part of the game centers around 2 major characters: The Scientists. We will include YOU as one of them. Your likeness will be designed to match the age of each scientist.
SYSTOLE takes place in a devastated world. We wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the beautiful places lost in that world. That’s why we want you to join us on a journey to the most exotic parts of Venezuela. These locations contain formations and natural phenomena exclusive to the Venezuelan geography:
In Venezuela there is a place where there’s a perpetual electrical storm. The thing about it is that this permanent storm is the only one known in the world capable of regenerating Earth’s ozone layer!
A trip through the Venezuelan Savannah, it’s waterfalls, towns and caves, including the highest waterfall in the world: The Angel Falls!
Have you ever seen Pixar’s UP? remember those amazingly surreal flat-top mountains? Well, turns out they’re real, they’re called Tepuy, and we will take you to the grandest of them, the Roraima. On top of it there are a number of natural wonders, such as a natural water pool made out of quartz!
Unlike any Kickstarter campaign you’ve seen so far, these rewards DO include accommodation, transportation within Venezuela and meals! We also have a team of experts that will take care of us during the whole trip!
*The travel date will be decided between all the backers of each tier. The travel date is subject to change for reasons such as the physical state of the travelers, weather or others.
If you need any additional information, please don’t hesitate to write us with your doubts! Many of us have already made those trips(several times) and may address any specific concern you may have :)
Risks and challenges
As you may already know, making videogames is hard! It takes multiple disciplines working together, time for testing, scraping and redoing things in order for them to work properly in the game.
For us, after the initial goal has been funded and Kickstarter/payment processing fees have been paid, the budget will be spent mostly in development, with only a little percentage going to peripheral costs(reward fulfillment and shipping, legal costs, taxes and PR), while another small percentage goes to cover licenses.
About the project management, each Game Model(See Stretch Goals section) increases the production time, while other stretch goals will be completed within the previous Game Model's time. Although we can’t give an exact development schedule at this time, we estimate the range of completion (including every Game Model) to be between 1 and 2 years.
Also, initially SYSTOLE will be available on PC, Mac and Linux, while porting to additional platforms will begin as soon as the initial release have been met.
We thank you in the name of the COCO Collective Consciousness, and we assure you that, regardless of the results of this campaign, we will strive to bring SYSTOLE to desktops and consoles around the world!
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Funding period
- (29 days)