Explore an Unforgiving Paradise
Open World Utopian Survival Horror Game P.A.M.E.L.A.® launches March 9th on Steam Early Access
Survive and Explore Diverse and Dangerous Environments Within Eden, a Fallen Utopia City Floating in the Ocean
Mississauga, Canada – February 23rd, 2017 – Indie development team NVYVE® Studios today announced that P.A.M.E.L.A., the first-person, open world, utopian, sci-fi, survival horror game, will launch on March 9th on Steam Early Access. In P.A.M.E.L.A. you must survive against all odds by wielding unconventional technology as you explore Eden, an unforgiving paradise that explores the unforeseen consequences of humanity’s craving for technological and biological advancement.
“Several years ago, we formed NVYVE® Studios with the goal of creating a game that took the survival genre, and built upon it with a hand-crafted sci-fi setting to create a wholly unique experience. The Steam Early Access launch is a culmination of those years, and will form a base for P.A.M.E.L.A., challenging players to explore and survive within the fallen utopian city of Eden”, said Adam Simonar, Studio Director of NVYVE® Studios. “We are looking forward to working with the community as we continue to evolve P.A.M.E.L.A., adding new features and content in the run-up to a full commercial launch”.
“P.A.M.E.L.A. represents a bold step for us. Having previously utilised Unity in our architectural practise, we’re excited to bring those skills into game design. I am very proud of our incredible team – It’s been a dream come true for everyone involved. A lot of sacrifices, sleepless nights, long days, sweat and tears went into making the game and we hope the gaming community enjoys it”, said Marvin Maalouf, President and CEO of NVYVE® Studios. “We see P.A.M.E.L.A. as the first in what will hopefully be a long line of quality titles to come out of the studio and want to show the world that a small team with a huge amount of passion can create beautiful, immersive and fun worlds for players to explore.”
P.A.M.E.L.A. begins as your character awakens from cryosleep in Eden, a fallen utopian city. Pamela, Eden’s lone AI overseer, provides information on how to survive within the city while bestowing amplified abilities upon the player. As you explore Eden, uncovering insights into the lives of individual citizens of Eden through discoverable data logs, you discover the tragic story behind the fall of Eden and learn about the way society used to function in this former utopia. Search the city for over 200 unique pieces of loot and resources, ranging from food to building materials and hi-tech weapons and upgrades, while using your hacking skills to unlock salvage containers or doors to access secret areas of the city.
As you learn about the city and your place within it, you will encounter and battle the Afflicted, the maligned citizens of Eden driven mad by a horrific biological outbreak. Governed by their excruciating pain and disfiguring disease, the Afflicted react in unpredictable ways, presenting a formidable, harrowing threat. As part of your arsenal, you have the holographic “AARM UI” system which projects the game interface directly into the game world, seamlessly heightening immersion and building tension during battles. Acquiring and upgrading the modular weaponry attachments for your AARM device allows you to further even the odds on the offensive. Defence is just as important, though, made possible by the game’s freeform base-building system, which enables you to build a personal safe haven amidst Eden’s hostile world. You can also use the Pandora IVG Multitool to discover even more items and manage your base.
You’ll eventually learn how to manage and upgrade Eden’s power systems to keep the lights on and use services such as elevators and vendor kiosks. But take care to avoid encounters with Eden’s security system. The deadly Seeker droids are still functional and will respond harshly to illegal activity, an additional threat. As every decision in Eden has consequences, you must tread carefully and think about the ramifications of your choices. What is the cost of enhancing your body with Bio-Augmentation? Sure, it might help in the short-term but the long-term implications may affect you in unforeseen ways.
This offers just a glimpse of what NVYVE, has planned for the future of P.A.M.E.L.A. and its full commercial release. NVYVE redefines ideas of what a small team can do and will be revealing more about its release calendar and how players can help shape the future of this exciting new open world survival game over the coming months.
P.A.M.E.L.A. Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/427880/
For the official website visit: www.pamelagame.com
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About NVYVE® Studios
NVYVE® Studios is an 8 person indie team that branched out, in late 2014, from NVYVE® Inc. an award winning visualization and interactive content firm. The team employed the skills gained in developing interactive non-game experiences towards creating their first game, P.A.M.E.L.A.®, a utopian survival horror game for Windows PC. The team includes a diverse background in architectural design, concept art, film, and more to create a unique mix of skills and direction. For more information about NVYVE® Studios, visit www.nvyvestudios.com
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Speaking of the rest of Velvet’s group, they are almost entirely made up of other misfits and miscreants who join with her. This includes a man also infected by the demon plague who is eager to slay his elder brother, a carefree sorceress, an old pirate captain seeking his missing captain, as well as a few more innocent members of the party in the form of a younger child and an exorcist named Eleanor. Eleanor works as something of a foil against Velvet as she offers one of the most virtuous viewpoints in the party often placing her at odds with the rest of her group.
While the story does take a bit to get going, in fact far longer than past Tales titles, Tales of Berseria’s darker tone and vengeance-fueled lead character help create a memorable storyline that is hard to walk away from. Combine that with its colorful cast of party members that are all given time to shine and plenty of development, players will walk away from this title remembering them for quite some time, something that I haven’t been able to easily say since Vesperia was released years ago.
The Soul Gauge will feel familiar for fans but does have limitations and perks. Any skills utilized will require a certain amount of souls but players will also have the ability to steal souls from their opponents by knocking them out or stunning them, allowing players to mix up their move sets, with custom made combinations, in an effort to work in some status-effects to keep the flow of combat moving smoothly. The counter here is that those who choose to spam will find that their soul gauge will drain too quickly and an empty gauge allows for your attacks to be blocked easily and enemies able to steal back their souls.
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As far as the soundtrack is concerned, the game features some great background music as well as the option to choose between both the English and Japanese voice track. While both serve as a great option, there are multiple times that the English subtitles do not match the actual English dialogue, meaning that the localization text tends to either be incredibly stilted or, in rare cases, barely comprehensible so to avoid this type of confusion the English voice track results in being the best option.
