Clearing Things Up: Project Moon's Future Plans

[Flygoniaks]

MAJOR SPOILERS for both Library of Ruina AND Wonderlab!

I've decided to post this in the English forum because it will remain visible for longer, and that's probably for the best. This is meant to be a sort of comprehensive post detailing what Project Moon will be working on after Library of Ruina is complete. This is is all based on OFFICIAL statements by Project Moon, whether it be in Q&As or proper announcements. There will also be a SMALL amount of my own predictions, though this is more about the plot of their future works rather than the games themselves. Of course, I'll be clear when I'm just theorizing!

Lobotomy Corporation 2?

Project Moon has announced that they will be working on two new games. Note that both of these games are only in the prototyping phase (pre-alpha?) and many details listed here are subject to change. The first of these games is currently named LC2, since it is another management-style game like LC; however, I think the title might change before the official reveal since you aren't playing as L Corp or anything.

"LC2" is planned to be a 2.5D management/simulation game where you manage and protect a section of the City. Distortions will appear within your area in real time, and you'll need to dispatch Fixers to deal with them. Whether or not they succeed or fail will be determined by their stats and characteristics. If you fail, there could be dire consequences, like entire city blocks being destroyed. Apparently, Syndicates will also appear in the game, and you'll have to deal with them too.

I'm pretty sure that LoR's post-credits scene with the Purple Tear (which was removed apparently?) was meant to be a teaser to this game. The promise of a 13th Association dealing specifically with Distortions seems like a pretty obvious tie-in. Actually, my theory is that we are literally playing as this Association in LC2, though I could be wrong. Because of this, I think it's possible that we'll see more of the Purple Tear in LC2, assuming my theory is correct. However, we don't have much info on this game.

Lobotomy Corporation "Branch"

In addition to LC2, Project Moon will also be starting development on LC:B, a sort of spinoff title. Funnily enough, it seems we actually have more information on this game than LC2. In LC:B, you run a Fixer office exploring the collapsed remains of L Corp's branches. The gameplay will be some kind of mix between a dungeon crawler and a first-person RPG (I think this means it will have gameplay somewhat similar to Earthbound, Undertale, OMORI, etc.; top-down overworld, first-person battles).

The areas you explore will have multiple floors, but also be divided into different departments (like the Control or Information Teams). As you explore, you'll encounter Abnormalities and have to deal with them. You can fight them as usual, and different Abnormalities will be weak to different sorts of attacks. However, it will also be possible to talk to some of these Abnormalities instead. Like in Lobotomy Corporation, you'll need to use trial and error to fill out your Abnormality codex.

As you explore these branches, you'll find loot in the form of E.G.O. While some E.G.O are simply stronger, the performance of the equipment also depends on the personality of the Fixer using it. Additionally, Fixers with certain personalities will get along better or worse with other personalities, so you have to form a team that synergizes well. If a Fixer dies (they can also panic, like in LC), you won't lose their E.G.O automatically, but you'll still have to retrieve it.

Now, it's theory time! I think it's fairly obvious that the ending and mostly the epilogue of Wonderlab was a teaser to this game. In that ending, some of the survivors of Branch O-5681 formed Bloom Office, which uses E.G.O and sometimes visits the remains of L Corp's branches. However, I wouldn't go as far to say we are playing as Bloom Office in this game - it could be a completely new set of main characters we've never seen before! Either way, Wonderlab definitely foreshadowed it.

The future for Library of Ruina

Will Library of Ruina get DLC? Project Moon was asked this a while ago, and while they didn't confirm anything, they did that DLC wasn't out of the question, and that they have "an idea" for potential DLC. It might be decided based on the success of the main game. I totally think a postgame DLC where we learn about the inhabitants of the Outskirts would be something really cool, though Project Moon could have been planning something entirely different for the story of the DLC.

And of course, there will probably be ports of LoR to other consoles. Project Moon has stated that they hope to bring the game to multiple systems. Now that an Xbox port has been officially confirmed, it's not unreasonable to assume it might come to PS4 and Switch as well. Now that Project Moon's getting some decent attention, they can actually afford this stuff. Unfortunately(?), the same can't be said for LC.

As for the Steam version, they confirmed that there will be workshop support for custom receptions. So even if we don't get a DLC, this game will live on through the community's creativity! There will also be achievements, and possibly stuff like emotes, trading cards and profile backgrounds! I'm interested in whether these will reuse art from the game or have original artwork drawn for them.

Also, Distortion Detective!

Lastly, the fact that LoR is nearly finished (for now) means that Kim Jihoon will likely return to writing "The Distortion Detective!" And with less to translate (at least for a while), hopefully the English translations to DD will also come out more frequently. Also, there is the possibility of more physical copies of DD as well (there was an announcement of Korean volumes being sold at HamHamPangPang a while back).  These physical editions come with their own illustrations!

I don't have much more to report on this, but I know I'm definitely hyped for where this story goes next! The writing stopped on a bit of a cliffhanger, so...

That's all for today!

I've noticed a bit of misinformation going around, with the biggest one being a "confirmation" that Library of Ruina will be recieving DLC. I made this post mainly to have a nice, convenient place to store all the facts and to clear up any rumors. Because of that, please let me know if you think I've gotten anything wrong and I'll verify/fix it. Thank you very much for your help in keeping this accurate!

Oh, and if you're wondering about the "8" songs (of which we have 6 so far) that apparently were in the contract between Mili and Project Moon, I couldn't actually find where that information came from (it was secondhand when I first heard it), so I didn't include anything about that. So, uh, if you have any good intel on that, I would love to see it! I want to confirm that there were actually 8 songs before I do theories.

[CarThief]

Hm, wonder what they'll do for game #1. Best way i could see it working is if they did it like Frozen Synapse 2, rather then Simcity. Having bases, units, sending them off to sites, probably a battle mode (because it'd be real boring without), possibly factions to keep placated/ally with/destroy, maybe increasing one's own infrastructure (more bases for faster response time, better units/equipment/etc).

Game #2 sounds like it'd work neat as a Roguelike of some kind. Or some kinda dungeon-crawler, yeah. I guess there's plenty to explore in the non-ejected parts of Nest L? Underground sections of Lobotomy Corp where mentioned in the story, with abnormality and employee alike abandoned underground as the main structure rose from deep underground.

Ah well, as long as it isn't a boring modern shooter, actual horror game or utterly unplayable RTS type game, i'd imagine it will all work out.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by CarThief:

I guess there's plenty to explore in the non-ejected parts of Nest L? Underground sections of Lobotomy Corp where mentioned in the story, with abnormality and employee alike abandoned underground as the main structure rose from deep underground.

Lobotomy Corp had branches in other Nests too, this was confirmed in Wonderlab. When the Seed of Light finally happened, all the branches of Lobotomy Corp "disbanded" by sealing themselves underground (this was apparently how it was SUPPOSED to happen, too).

[Flygoniaks]

So, I have a small update to this post, mainly detailing information from a fairly recent interview with Kim Jihoon. I'll just highlight the key points regarding their future plans:

1: Project Moon has received numerous investment offers from various companies, but has declined most of them because they don't want the influence of external companies to hurt their creativity. The recent Devsisters Ventures investment is an exception, as it is purely financial (whatever that means, I'm not an expert on this). They also declined offers from major publishers for LoR because they feared that advertising an indie game that much and creating a massive community for it could turn out poorly.

2: Kim Jihoon doesn't want Project Moon to only create games of the scope that is expected of "indie" studios, but wants to push what is possible further and further and continue to expand. He wants the studio to be financially sound and to provide good salaries to all its staff, and to have them be recognized as "a firm with commercial value and a vision," which is why they eventually decided to accept Devsisters' offer.

3: Regarding DLC, Jihoon says that whether or not they actually do the DLC will probably be decided by how many copies of the base game they sell. He notes that DLCs are inherently less profitable than the games they are for, so it has to be feasible for them to do it. As for what the DLC could include, he said that it would detail events that happen after the main story - in other words, it would be an extended postgame.

4: While LoR was about humans fighting humans... sort of... Jihoon said that he thinks a game where the player builds a sort of dungeon filled with Abnormalities for characters to enter and fight could be a fun idea too. He does NOT have any plans for a game like this right now, but I'm putting it in here as it could be a concept they return to in the far future.

5: He notes that their next games will likely be more ambitious, due to having more staff to work with this time. When work started on LoR, Project Moon had only 6 members, so the originally planned scope of the game wasn't super big.

6: He says that he wants to continue using different types of media to expand their universe, so we can expect more stuff like comics or novels at the very least.

7: At the time of the interview, they had not decided what platforms LC:B and LC2 are going to be made for... but that this should be decided in a few months. They also aren't sure whether they are going to do crowdfunding for their next projects like LC and LoR.

8: Apparently the Early Access experience with LoR inspired Jihoon, and he eventually wants to create a mobile game of sorts. The idea is to have a game that gradually evolves and grows alongside its community, and to include a "continuous storyline" that keeps going even as other main titles are made for other platforms. He implies that it will be free-to-play, saying that this reduces the barrier for entry for new fans of the series.

9: Kim Jihoon hopes that Project Moon will eventually become a "cultural center" of video games. Not something that will rival triple-A game companies or anything like that, but rather a name that gets brought up whenever talented Korean game developers are discussed. 

The full English translation of the interview can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jFFdZmE9vEyyr8Ub81pM6ANIEVul3P_dOqItYDRG4Qo

[Flygoniaks]

Holy crap, the day after I posted that small update we just got our first teasers for LC:B. This was completely coincidental, I swear. You can find it here: https://twitter.com/LiberareLimbus

[CarThief]

Guess it'll be refreshing to have a new cast after having the Sephirah and Angela around for eons? Does make me wonder if we'll see back some old Abnormality "friends", and if there will be any new ones for LC:B.

And reading back on it, the "real time" part of the city management one really worries me. I hope we can bloody pause it to plan and do what we need to do. If it's one thing I don't do well it's RTS games, and I doubt even PM can make them shine for non-RTS players...

[Leviathan]

We'll probably see at least SOME returning abnormalities. Wonderlab already showed that other branches had copies of the same abnormality, so...

This also means we might see aberrations, as well, depending on how important they are to the gameplay/story of Branch.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by CarThief:

Guess it'll be refreshing to have a new cast after having the Sephirah and Angela around for eons? Does make me wonder if we'll see back some old Abnormality "friends", and if there will be any new ones for LC:B.

Originally posted by Leviathan:

We'll probably see at least SOME returning abnormalities. Wonderlab already showed that other branches had copies of the same abnormality, so...

This also means we might see aberrations, as well, depending on how important they are to the gameplay/story of Branch.

In a previous interview (that I also posted about in the English forum), it was confirmed that old Abnormalities (as well previously scrapped ones and entirely new ones) could appear in future games, so there's a lot of possibilities for what we could see in these games!