ANKARA
Last week's deadly twin earthquakes in Türkiye moved millions around the globe, and the international community jumped to help the afflicted, with dozens of countries rushing to send humanitarian aid and rescue teams.
The disaster, which killed at least 36,000 people and left over 108,000 injured according to the latest figures, did not only take human lives; untold numbers of pets and stray animals were also among the victims, perhaps many unsung, unmourned.
There was, however, one particular working animal, a rescue dog whose heroism was applauded globally and whose loss was grieved around the world: Proteo.
Proteo, age 9, was a specially trained K9 for the Mexican search and rescue team who lost his life in the line of duty, while working to find and save people trapped by quake debris.
Moved by Proteo's services during the search and rescue efforts after the twin quakes, people flocked to social media to voice their grief over the German Shepherd’s sacrifice.
Some tweeted out their sadness in words, some created illustrations of Proteo in memoriam, and others posted photos of the noble pooch with a crying face emoji on top. But despite this large outpouring of sadness, Istanbul’s Nyctophile Studios wanted to do more.
The small, independent game studio based in Türkiye’s commercial capital decided to immortalize the four-legged hero in their upcoming banner release for PC and game consoles.
Bahtiyar Ardin, a full stack game developer and the studio’s founder, spoke to Anadolu exclusively about their move to include Proteo in their upcoming offering Death Relives and about the game itself.
I was saddened, moved
“When I heard about Proteo, I was extremely saddened,” said Ardin. “I was very moved by its heroism. As our game also takes place in Mexico, we decided to immortalize Proteo.”
The studio business, like all too many in Türkiye, also had a personal connection to the disaster, as two members of their own development team are survivors of the twin quakes, and fortunately are in good condition.
Ardin also said that several companies in the video game industry made contributions to help the thousands of afflicted. “But we’re a small, independent studio,” he said, adding that with their limited resources they donated to Türkiye’s state-run Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) and a non-governmental group known as Ahbap.
But soon, wanting to do more, he explained, “We came up with the idea of immortalizing Proteo, to include it in our game.”
Ardin said since the game is actually based on Aztec mythology and takes place in Mexico, this made including Proteo in the game "even more meaningful."
"We just wanted to make this little gesture," he said.
Asked about Proteo’s role in the game, Ardin stressed that due to the painstaking process of game development, it was too late to give the hard-working dog a leading role in the plot. Fully integrating him this late in the process would mean rewriting scripts, adding countless more hours of coding, and doing innumerable little tweaks.
“As it would be too difficult to make any changes in the game design, we decided to add a statue of Proteo to the game. We also added a note right next to statue which tells about Proteo’s efforts to save the Turkish people,” the developer said.
“When the player looks at Proteo and hits the corresponding button … a text box appears on the screen which gives the player a short account of the rescue dog’s efforts to save people after the earthquakes,” Ardin added.
“It will basically be an Easter egg that will tell a real story.”
Death Relives, a game in the making
Later, Ardin told Anadolu more about the game in which his studio is immortalizing Proteo.
“Death Relives is a survival horror game based on Aztec mythology. We have a character named Adrian who tries to survive (fighting) against Xipe Totec,” he said, referring to a Mesoamerican god of vegetation and spring, and thus death and rebirth.
According to the developer, Death Relives is a first-person shooter game with survival mechanics which uses the Unreal Engine 5.
The game also supports ray-tracing, which is a technology that makes in-game lighting very lifelike, and Deep Learning Super Sampling, a feature by leading graphics card maker Nvidia using artificial intelligence to boost the frame rate in demanding games.
“After we announced on Twitter that we would include Proteo in our game, the game became an instant hit, as many people applauded the gesture, and we topped the list on Steam,” the developer said, referring to Valve’s PC popular gaming marketplace.
“Footage of our game was being watched by thousands of people, but we couldn’t really enjoy the success due to our sadness over the earthquake victims in our country,” Ardin said.
They originally wanted to drop out of a Steam global publicity event out of respect for the earthquake victims, he said, but as an emerging studio, they had little choice.
“Steam has this Next Fest, which it holds three times in a year, and every studio only gets to join once. We felt obliged to take our chances and hoped for the public’s understanding,” he said.
“If we skip the festival, we may as well close up shop,” he explained.
Death Relives has a playable demo which made Steam’s most-played demos list for 12 hours, he said.
“We made ourselves quite a name globally, with the Americas and Asia showing more interest. People were intrigued by our inclusion of Aztec culture in a mythological horror framework, and the fact that we didn’t choose a clichéd theme,” he added.
Though the popular Resident Evil franchise and survival horror titles Alien: Isolation and Outlast were inspirations for their game, he stressed that Death Relives succeeds in carving out an original niche.
Multiplatform horror title
Even though many indie titles usually make it only to PC platforms, Death Relives will also be available on Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox, according to the developer.
“Sony and Microsoft liked our game a lot and both sent development kits,” Ardin said, adding that Sony required payment for the kit while Microsoft provided theirs for free.
The development kits were sent to Türkiye from the US, but he said there was too much red tape involved. “Customs procedures to import such kits should be made easier,” he said.
In another feather in their cap, Nyctophile Studios has also been accepted as a PlayStation Partner under Sony’s program to support indie studios, Ardin said.
