What it takes to create 60 hours of gameplay in 180 days

What the talk is about

Maks Tyshakov explains how Frogwares, known for its Sherlock Holmes series, is moving to an open world with The Sinking City, a Lovecraft-themed detective game planned for 60 hours of gameplay. The earlier linear Sherlock games relied on handcrafting every situation and took about 9–11 hours to finish, so the team had to rethink its approach. Mechanics were made reusable, and iteration was kept short: every evening the team plays what it has, in the spirit of a game jam. A flat team structure replaced a vertical one, with cross-discipline units formed per task. Dedicated tools were built for the city, characters and narrative, including a narration graph. Three units produced 11 quests in a month. Useful for game and quest designers and teams building large open worlds.