Lazy 8 Studios

Description

Lazy 8 Studios™ is an independent game studio in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 2008, Lazy 8 is committed to making high-fidelity, immersive games that break down the barriers of traditional game genres.

History

Early history

Lazy 8 Studios, LLC, was founded in 2008 by Rob Jagnow. While finishing his Ph.D. at MIT, Rob got his start in game development by working on flight simulators for companies in Switzerland and Japan. He worked on a variety of projects with Demiurge Studios, Gearbox, Kaos, EA and WXP before deciding to take a chance on his own. Puzzle games have always been Rob's passion and Cogs was brewing in his mind for years before he finally had an opportunity to make the game a reality. Made by just one programmer, one artists, and one musician, Cogs went on to sell more than a million copies and win a number of awards, including the grand prize in the professional category at the 2010 Indie Game Challenge.

Inspirations

With his background in computer graphics, Rob Jagnow found himself looking for new ways to bring gorgeous, photorealistic images to a Web audience. Starting from that initial concept, his team has authored a powerful, expansive story that plays out through photoreal renderings, emails, videos, voicemail messages, documents, and a collection of websites.

The game borrows several aspects from Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). You play the game as yourself -- not an avatar -- in a world that blurs the line between fantasy and reality. But unlike prior ARGs, we've created something that can be played by a single player, started at any time, and played from anywhere in the world. We genuinely believe that Extrasolar is the birth of an entirely new hybrid game genre.

Extrasolar®

Extrasolar puts you at the heart of a sci-fi thriller as you explore an alien planet one unique, beautiful photo at a time. On its surface, Extrasolar looks like a legitimate scientific expedition. When you apply to the program, you’re promised a chance to control one of the many rovers that the eXoplanetary Research Institute (XRI)™ has put down on the surface of an alien world. As a citizen scientist, you volunteer your time to help explore the planet one photo at a time. Before long, the story back on Earth becomes just as compelling as the startling discoveries on the planet as our player finds herself wrapped up at the center of a conspiracy, not sure whom to trust.

Extrasolar is pioneering new gameplay and technology. Gorgeous images of the planet's surface are rendered in the cloud and delivered to the player every few hours, making each player's experience unique and raising the bar for the appearance and immersion of Web games.

Projects