A New Beginning (video game)

A New Beginning is a point-and-click adventure video game developed by Daedalic Entertainment and published by Lace Mamba Global for Microsoft Windows, OS X and iOS.

A New Beginning
Developer(s)Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher(s)Lace International[1] (under Lace Mamba Global label)
Composer(s)Knights of Soundtrack
EngineVisionaire 
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS
Release
  • GER: 8 October 2010
  • EU: 3 June 2011
  • WW: 11 December 2012 (Final Cut)
  • WW: 8 December 2015 (iOS)
Genre(s)Point-and-click adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

The game is divided into 11 asynchronous chapters. The player controls Fay or Bent depending on the situation. The player can't switch interactively between them.

Plot

The game starts in the far future. Due to ecological disasters life is only possible in caves deep under the ground. Many lifeforms and organisms have become extinct and even the human race is about to disappear. Some inventors were able to develop a time machine which uses some kind of radiocarbon dating. They now send some researchers back in time by using some sample which was made in the year 2050. Fay and her coworker arrive in a ruined San Francisco. Fay contacts the other time travelers, but they all end up in some natural disaster and most of them die. Salvador concludes their team must travel back in time to a year where ecological problems already exist, but still can be solved. In their search they find an article about Bent Svensson who invented a biofuel based upon blue algae. They also find an article how earth got partially destroyed after a nuclear reactor exploded in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. This event destroyed the rain forest causing to start a chain reaction in which the earth went into a nuclear winter. The team travels back in time. However, it turns out Bent had to go on retirement due to health issues. The project is now led by his son Duve. Fay must convince Bent she really is from the future, the biofuel is the only solution to save the planet and the product must go in production right away. However, everyone has some reason to manipulate things for own purposes. This might fail the rescue of earth—or not.

Development

According to Daedalic's Carsten Fichtelmann, Valve rejected A New Beginning and Edna & Harvey: The Breakout three times from its Steam platform "on the grounds that their target audience did not care about the game". However, Daedalic went on to achieve success on the platform.[2]

Reception

Domestic
Reception
Review scores
PublicationScore
PC Games84%[3]
GameStar84/100[4]
4Players82/100[5]

International
Reception
Aggregate scores
AggregatorScore
GameRankings67.88%[6]
Metacritic72/100[7]
Review scores
PublicationScore
Adventure Gamers[8]
Destructoid4/10[9]
GameSpot6.5/10[10]

A New Beginning received mixed reviews. It received an aggregated score of 67.88% on GameRankings based on 8 reviews[6] and 72/100 on Metacritic based on 20 reviews.[7]

Soundtrack

While A New Beginning's soundtrack was primarily composed by Knights of Soundtrack, the credits list a number of additional people, who contributed music to the game. The main theme was written by Periscope Studios, Bent's Theme by André Navratil and Damian Zur. Florian Behnsen[11] and Giliam Spliethoff contributed additional music, while serving as the game's soundtrack and SFX supervisors.[12] The musical styles displayed, range from orchestral underscore, to incidental pieces in a 1980s Europop style and lounge music.

In 2010, the soundtrack received the German Developers Award for Best Soundtrack.[13]

Track listing

All music is composed by Knights of Soundtrack.

No.TitleLength
1."Not A Bright Tomorrow"2:38
2."The Beginning"3:06
3."Bent's Melancholy"1:04
4."Leaden Air"4:14
5."Secrecy"2:12
6."A Lonely Mission"2:09
7."Served With Light Snacks"1:24
8."Indez"2:38
9."It's Not Too Late"1:45
10."A Melancholy Return"1:02
11."Lazy Diamond"2:22
12."In The Working Mood"1:26
13."Atlas"3:44
14."The Weight Of The World"3:00
15."The Arrival"1:38
16."The Phoenix Plan"4:20
17."End Credits"4:59
Total length:43:32
gollark: GTech™ has a machine somewhere which induces that.
gollark: It does tell you if you hover over appropriate places.
gollark: Plethora has the sentry example. There are safety issues if you have glass and such.
gollark: Nanomachines.
gollark: PotatOS briefly had something like that for bundled utilities, I think.

References
  1. Published under the name Lace Mamba Global: "Several indie devs rally together against publisher Lace Mamba". Eurogamer.net. Eurogamer. Retrieved 14 July 2016.
  2. Steinlechner, Peter (October 23, 2013). "Goodbye Deponia, hallo Adventure-Verkaufserfolg". Golem.de. Archived from the original on March 18, 2016.
  3. Schütz, Felix (October 8, 2010). "A New Beginning im Test: Eines der besten Adventures des Jahres". PC Games. Archived from the original on October 15, 2013.
  4. Dworschak, Stefan (October 4, 2010). "Duzen gegen das Desaster". GameStar (in German). Archived from the original on December 25, 2010.
  5. Naser, Bodo (October 8, 2010). "A New Beginning". 4Players (in German). Archived from the original on October 11, 2010.
  6. "A New Beginning for PC". GameRankings. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  7. "A New Beginning for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  8. Keeley, Joe (3 June 2011). "A New Beginning review". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  9. Brown, Fraser (4 January 2013). "Review: A New Beginning: Final Cut". Destructoid. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  10. Raze, Ashton (22 July 2011). "A New Beginning Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  11. ""An end to a new beginning", music for the final cutscene". Soundcloud.
  12. "A New Beginning Credits". MobyGames. Retrieved 2012-11-06.
  13. "We got the German Developer Award for Best Soundtrack 2010 (A New Beginning)". 2010-12-02. Retrieved 2012-11-06.
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