Full Quiet to Bring a New Adventure to the NES

Indie game development continues to surprise with releases across a wide spectrum of genres, scope, and styles. One of the studios I vowed to keep an eye on was Retrotainment Games who were responsible for Haunted ‘85 and Haunted ‘86 that played around in the platforming and beat-em-up genre. The small games studio is based out of Pittsburgh, which was close to where I lived in Bridgeport, West Virginia. Those games eventually hit multiple platforms including the Xbox One and they scored two-colored SNES cartridge releases with Capcom for Mega Man X and Street Fighter II. Their latest NES project, Full Quiet, though looks to take things much further and into a new genre.

The game stars a father whose son has mysteriously been kidnapped. Armed with his ability to make things out of various electronics, a rifle, and bravery the father sets out into the forest with the goal to save his boy and bring quiet back to the woods. The game’s descriptions mention facing cryptic foes, leading one to believe that a supernatural element could appear. There’s also a lot of 80s nostalgia and humor built into the game’s promotional material.

Regardless, the game looks to feature side-scrolling exploration, first-person shooting, and puzzle-solving. This is all delivered in a style that oozes modern techniques that makes it seem like much more than an NES game. Part of me hopes that there is a bit of horror in this one but the adventure will likely satisfy my retro-fueled hunger.

When chatting with one of the game’s developers, we asked how the idea for Full Quiet came to be.

“We wanted to make an open-world game where you venture out into woods and see some weird stuff. Growing up, we spent a lot of time in the woods and saw some creepy things. So we felt it would make a great environment for this sort of game on the NES.”

We also asked why they continue to develop for the NES, a system that has long since been out of production?

“We love the damn thing. It's a great challenge and we enjoy being a part of a growing community of passionate people. Cartridge is king in our eyes.”

The latest demo of Full Quiet will be available at PAX East this year, right next to another NES Homebrew Candelabra Estoscerro, which is a unique dungeon crawler that has players using two NES controllers to navigate the game’s dungeons. Combine this style of design with the multitude of amazing ROM hacks coming out each month and it is an amazing time to be a retro gaming fan.

There has yet to be a release date solidified for Full Quiet but judging on the game’s progress updates and website it looks like the game will launch before the end of the year. For those not playing on an NES there will be a PC version and one can assume that a console release of some kind will happen eventually. Of course, as with almost any game I play, my fingers are crossed for a Switch release.

For more information about Full Quiet, check out the successful Kickstarter or the website for Retrotainment Games.