Almost exactly a year ago, we heard reports that a company called Nihilistic Software was working on a video game adaptation of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but since then we have yet to hear a single thing about the game. So today i thought i would turn my attentions to seeing what i could find out about the status of the game and/or when we were likely to see something of it (i'd imagine there will be some sort of presence for the game at the E3 event, June 15-17).

So anyway, in my searching, i came across the online website for Tim Miller, who is the Lead Level Designer at Nihilistic Software, and his website contains a few plans for level designs which should immediately catch the attention of any Narnia fan out there, even if the they don't specifically say they are for Narnia. There are four or five images which i believe to be Narnia related, and can be found at this link below (they should be the first 5 images as you scroll through the images clicking right). As always though, these images come with the warning that they may be based on outdated concepts based on previous incarnations of the movie script, and of course that video game adaptations of movies always take massive liberties in expanding upon the source material to make for much more involved gameplay. So as always, don't read too much, if anything into them, however i'll offer my interpretation on the images below:

http://www.tim-miller.org/design.html

1. Lone Islands Map - The thing you should probably spot straight away, and the thing that most easilly identifies this map as the Lone Islands, is the labelling of "Doorn Island" in the top right corner. The other main points of note on this map would be the "Tree of Protection" in the middle (sounds a bit like something from the old movie script) and the fact that there are two windmills (i would never really of considered Narnia to be a Windmill sort of place). The second of these windmills is identified as being the "Hermit's Windmill". A Hermit is also referenced on the next map, so this could be some sort of recurring feature in the game, kind of like the travelling man in the Resident Evil 4 who pops up in random places to enable you to buy items for your character, rather than any particular character from the movie.

2. Dragon Island Map - The main thing that identifies this map are the annotations reading "Eustace Dragon End Flight" and what i would presume to be "Eustace Dragon Start Flight" (the text is cut off at the edge). You should also see labelling for the "Dragon's Lair". (You should also be able to see "Hermits Lair" this time). The most interesting point of note here, is that there is a smaller inset map provided reading "Flashback", whilst the main map reads "Present Day". My interpretation of this would be that they planned on including a flashback in the video game to the time of Lord Octesian on Dragon Island. Again, this seems like the sort of thing they would do in order to expand the amount of playable gameplay sections in a video game adaptation, but something that probably wouldn't be in the movie.

3. Island Connections Map - This map seems to show the various islands, and the connections which exist between them in the game, suggesting that the video game may have a non-linear structure to it. Its pretty hard to read what is written on them, but you can make out more than a few - the smaller sausage shaped blobs seem to read "Dawn Treader A", "Dawn Treader B" and "Dawn Treader C", indicating 3 levels set aboard the Dawn Treader. The big Orange circle in the bottom right corner clearly reads "Aslans Country", the big grey one i would assume to read "Dark Island" and unfortunately the green circle right in the middle unmistakably reads "Green Witch Castle". Though like i said, these are likely to be very early plans, based on long outdated concepts from an early draft of the script, so no need to panic.

4. Another Connectivity Map - This map again shows the various connections that exist between elements of the game, again suggesting the game will have a non-linear narrative (some of the islands descriptions here seem to be broken down into "First Visit" and "Return Visit" suggesting the game would require you to visit some islands more than once). Again its hard to read, but you should be able to notice a few things to identify it as Narnia, such as the little box with a little illustration that says "Rescue Lord Rhoop" and numerous references to various islands, characters and events.

In the bottom right of this diagram you should be able to see a list of playable characters, and below that a list of "Lords by Location" - interestingly GoldwaterDragon is listed as a single place, with two Lords credited as being found there (Restimar and Octesian you would assume). However, oddly there appears to be 8 names on the list. The notable anomaly here is that someone is listed as "Found Alive on Island of Voices", whereas in the book, this was the one main island that did not possess a Lost Lord. Glance over to the top right corner, and you should see a box that i would assume to represent the Islands of Voices in the game, and in is description it would seem to read "Lord Mavramorn, Dufflepuds", even though 3 Lords were still listed as being found on Ramandu's island on the previous list.

Also notable on this diagram is that all the "Boss Fights" are indicated in Purple, with the sea serpent cropping up as a boss a few times, a boss fight with Eustace Dragon also appearing, and under Dark Island... a boss fight with "Nightmare King"?. Also, in the middle of the diagram, another reference to the leaked script in the form of a box, seemingly representing the "Underland Kingdom" Again though - its only a videogame / its probably based on outdated early concepts.

5. Menu Systems - This one i'm not to sure about, as there is nothing on it to definitely tie it to Narnia. Anyway, it seems to be some sort of diagram showing how the menu options work. Contains possibly some test images from the in-game engine, which look to be on an island of some sort, so you might assume it was VDT.

http://www.tim-miller.org/design.html