White Paper Games’ Pete Bottomley Talks I AM RIPPER – Interview Series

Manchester, UK-based developer White Paper Games, a studio best known for titles including Ether One, The Occupation, and Dahlia View, has removed the veil from its latest project, I AM RIPPER—a game that will reportedly feature the “brutality and economic decline of the 1980s” in an all-new choice-based thriller.

“I AM RIPPER builds upon everything we’ve learnt about story delivery, tactile gameplay and meaningful consequence,” White Paper Games writes in its press release. “It’s not a puzzle game, or a horror game, or a detective game, but it has all the key components of those genres to create something that feels rewarding, explorative of core themes and characters that feel real and grounded in their world.”

Fascinated by the culmination of three distinct genres merging into a 1980s time piece, I decided to reach out to White Paper Games’ Pete Bottomley to discuss the details.

It’s fantastic to hear from you. There’s a lot of ground that we would love to cover with you guys. Before we touch base on I AM RIPPER, though, let’s talk a bit about White Paper Games. Would you mind telling us more about the studio and the steps that brought you to this latest project?

Pete: We’ve been a development team since around 2010. We started off making small mod style games in UDK (Unreal Engine 3), then quickly went on to start prototyping our first commercial title Ether One which was released in 2014. Since then we worked on 2 other titles; The Occupation (2019) and Dahlia View (2021) and now we’re working on RIPPER. Over the years we’ve specialised more and more in Unreal Engine technology so since 2021 we’ve also been supporting some other teams using UE to help them ship their titles.

You’ve said it yourself: White Paper Games is known for its “performances, storytelling and world building.” What we would like to know, however, is how I AM RIPPER will build on this wealth of award-winning experience to exceed even greater heights. Tell us, how will this game build on the foundations of its predecessors?

Pete: We’re hoping to elevate RIPPER from a story arc, gameplay choice & performance capture perspective. Whenever we’ve had characters in our previous games, we’ve relied on hand-keyed animation. We trialled various motion capture techniques but nothing got close to the quality bar we were wanting to hit. After many R&D attempts, we’re in a place where we have a great motion capture setup in which we can also capture facial animation with to help bring our characters to life. From the story arcs, we’re thinking about the player being able to play their way and build an arc in the direction they’re seeing based on what is happening in the world. And from a gameplay choice perspective, using the open level design of Ether One, with the tactile immersion style mechanics from The Occupation to the thriller based beats of Dahlia View – we think a combination of these skills developed across our games will help us deliver a great experience to fans of the thriller genre.

Cast us out to the north-western docks of this ominous world. What’s the story here, and who, might we add, will we be filling the boots of over the length of the journey?

Pete: We always set our game spaces in specific locations to help lock down the details and the feel of the time/space. Whether basing Pinwheel (Ether One) on a fictional cornish fishing village), to a more industrial style set of buildings in Turing (The Occupation) based around Manchester/Liverpool, we think adding these world details helps draw players into the spaces and explore rich character arcs. The story for RIPPER will be of questioning Power and what power means in different people’s hands. Asking whether the use of power is ever justified.

Could you tell us a bit more about these “branching narratives” and how we, as players, will have the ability to tailor them?

Pete: We approach the narratives as micro and macro choices. Our preference for when narratives branch is to not be too explicit with changes the player is making on the world. When the player reacts in a certain way and the game responds by saying ‘yes’ is our favourite type of gameplay so there will be plenty of these micro moments for the player to react and change certain outcomes. The macro choices will be more telegraphed and intentional and form large splits and breaks in the story that will feel more impactful.

Take us a little deeper into the gameplay, if you’d be so kind. What sorts of trials await us in I AM RIPPER?

Pete: We’ll leave that question for another gameplay reveal!

Let’s talk about surviving in this world, or better yet, solving the dominoes as they fall. Are there any words of wisdom that we ought to know about before starting this investigation into the Ripper case?

Pete: The main piece of advice is that all lives are fragile, we never know when one lifeline will end and failure isn’t a concept in the game, the game will continue whether you’ve felt successful or not.

I AM RIPPER is due to grace both Steam and Epic Games Store. We’re curious — is there a console version in the works, too, or will the game be exclusive to PC?

Pete: We’re not actively developing on consoles at the moment, but we have shipped our other titles on consoles and have a lot of experience doing so. Although RIPPER isn’t currently exclusive to PC, we’re yet to lock in specific console plans at this stage.

Not to prod you into oversharing or anything, but we have to ask — how close are we to seeing I AM RIPPER on the shelves?

Pete: We’re not sure yet! It’s definitely not a ‘it’s finished when it’s finished’ because we’re self-publishing and have to dedicate a certain time and budget to RIPPER, but we also don’t want to rush the process and design a game we’re incredibly proud of so we’ll iterate and make sure we feel it’s right before we announce any dates.

You’ve been great — thank you. Before we wrap this up, is there anything else you would like to add? Are there any additional details that you would like to share with our readers?

Pete: Not currently! We’re just excited to share our development journey with your audience so if anyone wants to learn more or chat to us you can find us on most of the platforms you connect with developers on. Thanks for your time!

No, thank you, Pete!

You can find even more information on White Paper Games’ I AM RIPPER by following the team over on their official X handle here. For even more pre-launch updates on the game, be sure to add it to your wishlist on Steam here.