Announcing Boïnihi: The K'i Codex

Boïnihi: The K'i Codex is a Black Cube Adventure game following the release of ASA, Myha and Catyph, and is on target to be released May/June 2020.


View the trailer here.

Check out the screens on the official website here.




Happy Gaming!

Thanks Ana!

Thanks a lot Ana for making this thread about Boïnihi!

In fact I was going to contact you in a few days because I have not officially announced the project. I tried to keep some mystery around it, by not showing too many pics and video.
I just teased it and gave some details about the development, but it has been evolving a lot! It's no longer a 1st person adventure like ASA. In the thread of Myha, I briefly talked of Boïnihi and said that not everyone will like the new direction, but I think others will be more curious!

Brief history of the project (a bit of behind-the-scenes for the more curious ones)

Boïnihi was started in 2016 following the Myst Jam (which gave birth to Myha), just after the development of Catyph.
I had a bit of free time before the final release of Catyph, and some ideas that I wanted to explore. At the same period I also discovered the Voynich manuscript and thought it was really a fascinating thing, and started to wonder how I could use this kind of mysterious book in a game.

I first wanted to make a short game for a change, easier than ASA and Catyph to try to make it accessible to more people. I decided to work with the Adventure Maker game engine, in an old-fashioned style ( = low resolution, 256 colors... something like Riven). I used to love the Adventure Maker engine and I really wanted to play with it again (it is still true today but it's become more complicated technically speaking to release a project with it). It was the engine that gave birth to ASA (before ASA Remastered) and without it I wouldn't be here today.

Project Boïnihi was born, and thought as a new 1st-person adventure in the spirit of ASA and Catyph before. Something that I would create for the fun, on a short period of time.

While working on it, I saw that the game had more potential that I first thought, and, as I was trying new techniques to work on making textures on my 3d models, I decided to try to import them into the Unity 3D engine. Boïnihi was, for a while, my first real-time attempt of a full 3D project (long before Myha: Return to the Lost Island).

But I didn't have the skills to program the puzzles in Unity, it's quite complicated if you are not a good programmer (I'm a 3D creator more than a coder/scripter) and I quickly gave up with the idea of using Unity.

I went back to my first idea of a game in 2D (using prerendered 3d graphics as usual), because I master the tools, but with time passing I didn't want to use Adventure Maker anymore: it was more and more abandoned by its developer, unfortunately (today you can't even buy it). So I decided to go back to Visionaire Studio engine (the engine of ASA Remastered and Catyph), knowing however that the development would take much longer and that I was starting a more ambitious project as a result. But I like to experiment, and I know I took the good decision. Perhaps there will be another time in the future for Unity, we will see.

You can read part of this story in an article I made in the end of 2017:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/bonihi-the-ki-codex/news/evolution-of-the-project

Project BoÏnihi was progressing slowly but well in 2017 but then 2 major things happened in my life.
First, Denis contacted me to work on a full3D remake of Myha, and it was great, so we did the Kickstarter campaign in November 2017, and we worked on the game until the release in 2019.
And next to this, my father became seriously ill in February 2018 and stayed at the hospital during several weeks, until he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and passed away in the end of 2018.
2018 has been a very though year, both exciting with Myha, and terrible with the desease of my dad. As a result Boïnihi was paused and I didn't work on it before a long long time. All my plans would be changed again! Fate?

One thing led to another and I went back to work on Boïnihi later in 2019 after the release of Myha. In the meantime I had learned how to use 3D characters in Visionaire Studio (you can see Adventure Jam 2019 on GameJolt with my short game My Village is Magical). Then another short game, Eoin's Quest (Icehouse Jam 2019 on itchio), confirmed my interest in games where you can control a character, and I've completely redesigned Boïnihi in the last few months, so that you can finally play with the astronaut.

However, I love Myst-like adventure, and I didn't want to remove the spirit from it. That's how the game became a hybrid project between 1st person (Myst) and 3rd person (Syberia for example). I'm currently quite happy with this result even if the game is not perfect! And I know that some will not like it because playing with the keyboard is mandatory to move the character.

Anyway, that explains the huge development time over 4 years (even if I didn't work on the game during all that time), for a game that is finally less long and less difficult than ASA and Catyph.
However I hope that the result will make you curious!

I will soon publish the Steam page with a new reveal Trailer, showing the new gameplay. I'll let you know.
The game will release for Windows, between the end of May and somewhere in June if everything goes well. It will be available on Steam and itchio.
I'll give more details soon.

You can also take a look at this article, telling how I created the regions of Boïnihi:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/bonih...-the-regions-of-my-myst-like-game-bonihi

Thanks Ana and Simon.

Thanks, Simon! I saw your post on it and then googled it and saw lots of announcements but not here. I figured better late than never! Just an FYI, it falls under the 1st person tab on your website, that is where I got it from. I have removed the statement in my announcement. Thank you so much for the background! Happy Gaming!

Yeah it's still listed as 1st person because the new gameplay was still a secret I'll have to update the site with many new things before I publish the Steam page.
Anyway, thank you Ana!

Thanks both of you for the info

Thanks, Simon and Ana!

Thanks, looks interesting. I will be keeping my eye on this one.

Hi Simon,

first off, thanks for your response to my post on the Myha-thread :-)
Regarding Boïnihi , me and my gaming buddy (Jochen) will both buy it for sure. We like all sorts of
adventure games (myst-like games are our favorites, though), so some sort of hybrid game sounds intriguing.

Hi everyone! Thanks for your comments Mad, Iurii, Winfrey and mike_bn (and Jochen too then)!

I am waiting for Steam to validate the public page of Boïnihi, but in the meantime I have updated the official page on the Black Cube site:
http://www.theblackcube.fr/boinihi

Don't miss the new Trailer on that page!
https://youtu.be/cYQHL-p-q2I

I will continue to update the page until the day of the release, by adding new screens from time to time, and the Launch Trailer finally.

I hope you are intrigued and will like what you see. I don't know if the fans of Myst-like will be as excited as for my previous games.
However as I said before it will probably not please all adventure players, but I wanted to experiment and try something different for once...

Let me know what you think!

Simon, is this page working?
Somehow it could not be opened for me in Ukraine, as well as for my readers in Russia...

@Iurri Hi! Yes for me it works. Anyone else?

Try to add .html at the end:
http://www.theblackcube.fr/boinihi.html

or https:
https://www.theblackcube.fr/boinihi.html

If it still doesn't work, it's probably a security issue because of a certificate or something like that, because my website is on a .fr domain that redirects to weebly.com (which is a secured website)
I'll have to work on this. Thanks for telling me

The Steam page should be available very soon with the same content. I'm just waiting for their validation, but with Covid it's a bit slower than usual.

Update:
Finally the Steam page is available!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1298050/Bonihi_The_Ki_Codex/

Please don't forget to wishlist the game if you're interested! It helps support the project and gives a bit of exposure to it. Thank you!

All the links work ok for me!

Ditto - they all work for me too.

Still does not work unfortunately...
In fact the whole http://www.theblackcube.fr/ does not show anything
It could well be some security issue, but I do not remember such behavior from any other site.
And there are no messages about some certificate or block.

@Iurii

I don't know It seems to work for many people.

Could you check the following?

- visit another .fr website (for example: https://www.indiemag.fr/)

- visit weebly.com (the site that I use to make the black cube site)

Is there a problem with any of them?

www.indiemag.fr works fine!
weebly.com does not...

And you can check here: "It's not just you! theblackcube.fr is down."

Iurii, I checked the website, this is what I get

"Theblackcube.fr Status
Is theblackcube.fr down right now?
It's just you. theblackcube.fr is up.

It must be blocked by something on your end.

Well, it is certainly not just me. It seems that Weebly is blocking Russia, Ukraine etc.

Iurii, it might be Weebly according to this from 2018.

BrownEyedTigre, I can't open that page either - but yes, its Wikipedia entry does explain that in October 2018, Weebly did block quite a number of countries, including Russia and Ukraine.
"The list does include most of West and Central Africa along with reports of Russia, Middle East and many Asian countries."

An odd decision, if I may.

Thanks a lot Ana for digging into this! Very interesting...

@Iurii
Wow, this is indeed an odd decision, and a very bothering one! First of all it's a problem for me and my games, secondly it's a problem for the players who want to see them but can't, and also on a third point because I was NEVER informed of this officially by Weebly! I have a paid account there since 2016 or maybe even before, and now I'm angry! If some countries cannot see my website, I think I am in right to know it at least... Then I could decide to stay on Weebly or not, but I should be informed of this!
All my sites are on Weebly, that I used to find very convenient to edit "clean" websites in my situation of solo creator... The Black Cube series, The Icehouse collective, My Magical Village and my Portfolio are all there.

My main problem is that the Black Cube site is starting to be quite huge with many pages and content, episode after episode, and I don't have time to recreate it from scratch (at least not before a long while). It will not be easy to make an all new website with the same kind of content
So I'm afraid I have no solution for you Iurii... But I can't say I like to say it.

I'm going to write them asap to get an explanation, but I know it will result in nothing special... Just like many companies they probably don't care when only a few people complain.

I was already unhappy of Trepstar, who was publishing my DVDs of the Black Cube games: they suddenly deleted my settings and files without warning, because I didn't renew them after 6 months by paying a fee. I had renewed several times in the past, it's $2 per disk so I can afford it, but this time I wasn't informed and I discovered my disks were deleted... And when I contacted the technical support to explain that I was not happy, the owner of Trepstar insulted me of idiot.

Just to be clear, I'm not the first one in that case: "Trep-Stars owner is rude and his customer service is the worst Ive ever encountered."
https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/cd-fulfillment.com#2

It's difficult to trust web companies, they're peacefully hidden faraway behind their screens. I'm sure that many are doing their best, but they should at the very least try to be transparent and not insult their customers...
Regarding Weebly at least I'd like to know why they took this decision! I'll keep you updated, but it could take some time.

That being said, please allow me to ask that we focus on Boïnihi here? I'll just slip a quick note when I have some news, so that you are updated Iurii, but I would prefer that the forums continue to talk of adventure games first

Hi! I've finally released Boinihi:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1298050/Bonihi_The_Ki_Codex/

Available in English and French, for Windows, $19.99 (there's -10% if you buy it with the Black Cube bundle).
Coming to itch.io drm-free in a couple of days (I'll let you know).

I really hope you like it!

Release Trailer:
https://youtu.be/_iDOSmYmzG8