Everybody's Gone to the Rapture removes one hour time limit

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture no longer restricts players to just one hour of exploration each time they fire up the PlayStation 4 indie.

Thechineseroom lead Dan Pinchbeck told Eurogamer that the Groundhog Day-style hourly resets, a feature detailed following the game's gamescom 2013 announce, have been given the chuck.

"It's an artificial conceit that doesn't necessarily produce a good player experience," he said. "[The idea is] probably more suited to an arcade-style game, but not really good for a non-linear story-driven drama."

It's hard to argue with that, but the initial pitch sounds pretty interesting.

"How far can you get? How much can you explore? Imagine reading a novel and you're really into it, and 30 pages before the end someone comes up and takes it out of your hand and goes, 'I'm afraid that's it. Your time's up,'" he said of his original design.

Although this plan has been axed, time still plays a "fairly central role" in the game, Pinchbeck added.

"One of the things we really, really wanted to explore with Rapture was the uniqueness of storytelling in games. So there are things you can do in terms of how the narrative is structured and how the player relates to the structure of that narrative and how time relates to all of that, that you can't do in another medium. That's something that's pure games. We really wanted to explore: what is it we can do with this that no other medium would be able to touch? How do we make this a real 'game drama' rather than a drama that just happens to be a on a game machine?" he said.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is coming to PS4 in 2014. Thechineseroom is known for Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

Thanks, Joystiq.