Hello everyone!
I'm one of the designers working on Alpha Polaris and I was really happy to run into this thread

I noticed you had some questions and I will do my best to answer them below. I will drop by from time to time so please don't hesitate to ask more questions and give our team feedback on the project.
Very nice. Always glad to hear of someone new developing an adventure game. Look forward to a couple of those screenshots. I also hope the developer will chime in and explain a little about what they mean by "Streamlined Point & Click interface" and "hand-drawn dialogue portraits"
With streamlined point & click interface we mean our interface is clean and simple. The aim is to let you immerse yourself in the story and enjoy all aspects of the game instead of struggling with the controls. You will only need the left and right mouse button to move around and interact with items (we will release more information and screenshots about this in the future).
Alpha Polaris will be using hand-drawn dialogue portraits. We thought that only showing the 3D characters wouldn't convey the huge array of different emotions our characters express in the game and thus we opted to use 2D portraits. Something similar has been done for example in Hotel Dusk : Room 215 and Gabriel Knight : Sins of the Fathers.
I am really looking forward to this game. I do hope the game designers will not put skill games into the game and have more conversational puzzles and logical ones. In my opinion I prefer games where I have people to converse with instead of solving a skill puzzles or fast reflexes or you die sort of thing.
Good old fashion ghost stories don't need skill puzzles or fast reflexes. I like to hear the voice of the main character I am playing as well as the characters I meet in a story. This is just my opinion but having heard about the new game it gives me hope someone might actually achieve a game that will give us thrills and chills of solving a haunting.
I was hoping someone would ask about this

Our puzzles are definitely on the logical and realistic side (not boring though!). We wanted the puzzles to merge into the story instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. We also have puzzles that revolve around the characters and interaction will be a key factor.
Hopefully these answers were helpful! I will be able to answer more thoroughly when we get closer to the games release. In the meantime you can ask more questions on this forum or visit us at:
Turmoil Games Best regards,
Veera