paranormal intelligence bureau Archives

First episode- PIB Origins: The Zebrina

News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Jun 222018

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau (PIB) is a series of turn-based tactics games in the style of XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics. The games will focus on agents of the Bureau’s fight against horrors based on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Or as he himself would call it, Yog-Sothothery. PIB Origins will explore the origins of the cast of PIB.

PIB Origins: The Zebrina

The name for the very first episode of Paranormal Intelligence Bureau has been set. It is going to be PIB Origins: The Zebrina. We landed on this name because the story of the Zebrina is the cornerstone of the story in the first episode. Furthermore, we chose this name because we didn’t want the name to spoil what happens in our version of the story. After all, in H.P. Lovecraft’s own words, the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. If you read our last blog post, you already know that PIB Origins: The Zebrina is releasing in 2018. Steam will be our most prominent platform, so look out for PIB in Steam’s coming soon section. Below we present to you a sneak peak at our version of the Zebrina from the game(Render).

“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” – H.P. Lovecraft

The Zebrina- Q-ship of the Great War

The Zebrina

In truth, The Zebrina was a Q-ship transporting coal from Falmouth, UK to St. Brieuc, France. Q-ships were heavily armored merchant ships, disguised as regular merchant ships, designed to lure hostile submarines into making surface attacks. One feature of PIB Origins: The Zebrina will be navigating the Zebrina away from danger. Or perhaps towards danger? The choice is yours. The channel between Falmouth and St. Brieuc was dangerous with german submarines sinking British and French ships. PIB Origins: The Zebrina will feature german submarines of the time. You can see our version of the German U-21 submarine below. Even though German submarines and marines were the terror of the war, be warned. In our version of the story, the crew might encounter far worse things than German Marines.

The German U-21 submarine

The Soldier

The Soldier ended up as an agent of the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau. What happened to him that lead to him being recruited by the elusive Paranormal Intelligence Bureau? The Soldier is a veteran from the Great War, where he served in the British navy on an array of different ships. One of his last duties was aboard the Zebrina, when he and the rest of the crew set sail from Falmouth in Cornwall on an especially gloomy September day in 1917. The Zebrina never reached its destination, and was found washed ashore on Rozel Point without any of its crew. The Soldier never talks about what happened. In PIB Origins: The Zebrina, the story from this mysterious journey will see the light of day. Below you can see a glimpse of the PIB Origins: The Zebrina title screen. What horrors lie hidden in places you cannot see?

PIB Origins: The Zebrina title screen with combat music from the game

The Paranormal

PIB Origins: The Zebrina will feature key paranormal entities from the PIB universe. In the game where Xcom meets H.P. Lovecraft, danger should lurk around every corner, don’t you think? Who knows what cultists have been able to summon in dark dungeons of old. Stay tuned here and on Steam in the coming soon section. Consider adding us to your wishlist to be notified instantly when Paranormal Intelligence Bureau is released. And with some famous words in Lovecraft’s own language R’lyehian, often spoken by devoted cultists, we bid you a sinister farewell. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war on the paranormal!

PIB Origins: First episode coming in 2018

News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Jun 192018

Introducing PIB Origins

The main Paranormal Intelligence Bureau game is a huge project. Because of this, we decided some time ago that PIB is going to be a series of smaller games, exploring the origin stories of the cast of PIB. Enter PIB Origins.

Our current cast consists of The Soldier, The Medic and The Parapsychologist. These three will be the main characters through the PIB Origins series. The first story in PIB Origins will be the origin story of the Soldier.

PIB Origins - The Agents

PIB Origins, a serier of smaller turn-based horror games

PIB Origins will be split into three smaller stories, which are part of a bigger story arch. Each story will feature three episodes. This way we can get PIB out much earlier to you, the player. In the past we stated that the Lovecraft mythos plays a huge role in PIB. But how does Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos interact with the PIB-universe you ask?

To pique the interest of all you Lovecraft fans out there, we made a spoiler-free list of some select entities playing a role in the PIB-universe.

Great Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones.
The daemon sultan Azathoth and the Other Gods and their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep.
All-knowing, all-seeing Yog-Sothoth, the gate, the key and the guardian. Said to be guarding the veil between realities, time and space.
Lovecraft’s more mortal races like The Elder Things with their abominable Shoggoths, the Mi-Go from the planet Yuggoth and the time travelling Great Race of Yith.
The increasing corruption from the thinning of the veil also transforms the worlds flora and fauna into the more common monsters of legend: Vampires, Werewolves, Ghouls, Zombies, Ghosts and more.

Furthermore, we can now reveal that the first episode of PIB Origins will be available for purchase in 2018!

The Zebrina

Like we mentioned, our first origin story will introduce The Soldier. He served on board the infamous ship, The Zebrina. According to official sources, The Zebrina was transporting coal from Falmouth, UK to St. Brieuc, France. Two days later, the ship was (in)famously found ashore on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, with no sign of the crew. The first episode of PIB Origins will include our version of what actually happened to the crew during those two days in 1917. More on this in upcoming posts.

PIB Origins - The Soldier PIB Agent: The Soldier

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau to stay updated on the newest screenshots, gameplay and features from PIB Origins!

As an extra treat, we present to you this theme music that our composer, Tristan Gray, exclusively composed for the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau. This will feature in the game. He calls it “Zebrina”. We will leave the rest up to your imagination.

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war against Lovecraftian horrors!

PIB Concepts: The Train demo scene

Games, News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Oct 032017

Concept Art: Train Scene - Featured Image

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau is a turn-based tactics game in the style of XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics. The game will focus on the fight against horrors based on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Or as he himself would call it, Yog-Sothothery. We present to you, the concept art of the first scene from the first version of the game, the train demo scene.

The train demo scene

We’re currently working on the first demo of the game, which will focus on three different scenes with a common storyline. The storyline will take the agents on a mission to stop a group of cultists, who are trying to summon a Lovecraftian horror from another dimension. The first scene will be the train demo scene, which was inspired by several positive comments on this concept art by Ståle Tevik.

Chris Steck, our short-term intern, used this as inspiration to make a new concept for the train demo scene. He focused on making the cultist slightly Lovecraftian in look. We think it turned out quite nice! Don’t you agree?

The Soldier and the Medic fights a group of cultists, and their leader, on the roof of a moving train. So we also plan to add hazards to the scene, where cultists or even agents can get knocked off the roof! And that could set the stage for a lot of fun, or more likely, horrible, situations.

In fact, in the final game, we will focus on adding interesting scenes like this as much as possible.

The story in the train demo scene

After extensive detective work, The Bureau found suspicious incidents along the Trans-Siberian railway. Incidents hinting at activities of a paranormal nature. The Bureau thus send the agents out to investigate the incidents. Which leads them to board the Trans-Siberian Express, to see if they can discover what is going on.

Needless to say, there are cultists on board with sinister agendas, who in good Lovecraft tradition are more than they seem. And the agents must reveal them before it’s too late! Their agenda and what the agents need to do to reveal them is something for you to find out in the demo when it’s ready.

We have another scene planned which we will show off later. And it’s even crazier than a fight on the roof of a speeding train! So make sure to keep up with future updates by joining our newsletter below, if you haven’t already!

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war against Lovecraftian horror!

PIB Agents – Introducing The PIB Medic

Games, News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Sep 192017

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Agent - Medic

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau is a turn-based tactics game in the style of XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics. The game will focus on a Bureau’s fight against horrors based on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Or as he himself would call it, Yog-Sothothery. We introduce to you the second agent role of the bureau, the PIB Medic.

Introducing the Agents: The PIB Medic

Things take time… This is our first update since we showed off The Soldier back in November, due to being swamped with contract work to make ends meet. Christer finished the model for our second agent some time ago and it’s high time we showed her off! Hence, without any further ado, I present to you, the PIB Medic!

PIB Agent: The Medic (Real-time renders)

About the PIB Medic

As you can see from her battle scars, the Medic has seen some gruesome action. As a veteran of the Great War, it’s nothing unusual that she would’ve been left with horrifying scars. But not even the war could account for those, but rather the Lovecraftian horrors she has seen and fought as part of the bureau, that made her into the hardened medic you see before you. PIB Medic’s specialize in healing and buffing the physical bodies of the agents; through the use of medicine, drugs, and more obscure arts like the crafting of alchemic potions.

PIB Medic’s specialize in healing and buffing the physical bodies of the agents; through the use of medicine, drugs, and more obscure arts like alchemy. So the Medic will take more of a support role among the squad, but at the same time, they will definitely be more than capable of defending themselves.

The agents in the game

The Medic is indispensable to any squad sent out to battle the eldritch horrors of the Lovecraftian world. Squads in PIB should be evenly balanced, which is why we focus on the three most essential roles first. The Medic who will increase their survival chances, as described above. The Soldier who will be the muscles of the squad, should they need to take out horrors of the mortal kind, cultists or even just distract the less mortal ones. And lastly, the Parapsychologist who will keep the squad sane, and use their occult knowledge to fight off more mystical aspects of the Lovecraftian horrors.

Ideally, we aim to make agents more randomly generated in the final product, but we’re making a more focused demo first. Therefore, we will keep the focus on three agents first to show off our vision. These agents are The Soldier, The Medic (see above), and The Parapsychologist (coming); who also dabble in the occult.

As mentioned though, we would like to make all agents more random and even customizable in the final game, sort of like they did in the new XCOM games. Is that something you would want? Leave your preferences for agents customization in the comments!

Next agent will be the Parapsychologist, but we’ll hopefully have some other updates before that too, so stay tuned!

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war against Lovecraftian horrors!

PIB Agents – Introducing The Soldier

Games, News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Nov 232016

Introducing the PIB Agents: The Soldier

One of our artists, Christer Sveen, of Funcom and Blink Studios fame, have finished the model of the first of our Agents: The Soldier.

The Soldier is a veteran from the Great War, where he served in the British navy on several different ships. One of his last duties was aboard the Q-ship Zebrina, which ended in his first encounter with the Paranormal. After leaving Falmouth in Cornwall one September morning in 1917, The Zebrina was found washed ashore on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, without any of its crew.

The Soldier never talks about what happened, but shortly after he was approached by a recruitment agent from the PIB. Since then he has been serving the world’s hidden war against the paranormal threat.

We feel we have landed on the perfect style for our agent characters with this one. What do you think?

PIB Agent: The Soldier – A veteran from The Great War (Realtime render)

Our next character is currently under modeling, so stay tuned to see what our artist comes up with next!

Join the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau and stay updated on the war on the paranormal!

The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau is back on track!

Games, News, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau Comments Off

Nov 202016

Paranormal Intelligence Bureau - The Paranormal

We teased our next project, The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau on Steam Greenlight Concepts some time ago. But updates have been far between during 2016… That’s because 2016 is a crazy year and we’ve even been on the brink of shutting the studio down. But after summer things started picking up again and the future is a lot brighter now! We secured some limited funding to pay those veterans we bragged about having on the team. And production has now finally started for full!

We’ll update with assets as they are completed, here on our blog and also on all our social presence for the game. For those of you who haven’t seen our Steam Greenlight Concepts page yet, let me introduce to you the concept of The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau!

The Paranormal Intelligence Bureau

H.P. Lovecraft meets XCOM meets X-Files! Control The PIB and defend the world against Lovecraftian horrors. Don’t let humanity fall to the cultists, paranormal entities, and Elder Gods!

When the stars are right, the veil between our reality and others become dangerously thin. So thin that breaching through can be done with minimal effort by even the weakest of magic rituals or pseudo-scientific contraptions. These wounds of the veil allow corruption from more ominous realms to pass into our world, transforming innocent creatures into paranormal entities of legend and unleashing inexplicable horrors unto the world.

Cults of our world work to tear this veil open with obscene rituals which will summon forgotten horrors of ancient times, and to conjure up portals that could reach outside of the ordered universe, to summon the Ultimate Gods.

The only real defense against these beings, entities, and events of the paranormal is an old and ancient world-spanning order – now known as the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau (PIB). Agents recruited from around the world, fighting to rid the world of this ominous threat.

Inspired by games such as the XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics Series, Paranormal Intelligence Bureau will be a tactical turn-based game. The goal is to save the world of the roaring 20’s from a threat of paranormal nature.

From your headquarters aboard a majestic zeppelin, you control a roster of agents to combat the paranormal threat, close shut any ruptures in the veil and banish the Elder Gods themselves.

As one of the leaders of the Paranormal Intelligence Bureau, you control the Agents. People with wide variety of backgrounds, recruited to the Bureau because of their previous encounters with the Paranormal.

We might revise the roles in the future, but at the moment we’re focusing on the three roles of Soldier, Medic, and Parapsychologist.

The Agent and their Roles

The Soldier: Usually veterans of the Great War, the Soldier is a specialist in both unarmed and armed combat. While the more ominous horrors often are impervious to physical damage, the Soldier is essential to distract any adversaries. While you work to banish the horrors from our world.
The Medic: Specialists in both traditional medicine and experimental alchemy. Hence the Medic is the perfect support role for healing the bodies of and boosting your Agents.
The Parapsychologist: Skilled in both the arcane & mystical and the workings of the mind & psyche. The Parapsychologist therefore takes care of any ruptures in the veil with occult rituals. And also makes sure their fellow Agents keep their sanity in the presence of eldritch horror.

In the game, you will need to defeat the paranormal seeping into our world. Such as Nightgaunts, unseen Shamblers and other unnameable and indescribable things.

And more importantly, you need to stop the many cults of the world from ripping the veil wide open. To stop them from summoning Ultimate Gods or awaken Great Old Ones, like Cthulhu, to walk the earth again.