Schanz International Consultants are attempting to find publishers for the five games that they were showcasing at E3, one of which is a role playing game that goes by the name Grotesque. While still in the pre-alpha stages of development, Grotesque is an attempt to produce a role-playing game that is less serious and instead focuses on a more humorous edge, in contrast to PC releases such as Blizzard's famous MMORPG World of Warcraft. The team of developers at Silent Dreams have decided to approach Grotesque from a more light and humorous perspective. While currently only being developed by a small team of twelve to fifteen at Silent Dreams, this game looks as if it has a lot of potential, even though we were not able to go hands on at this early stage in its development.

The storyline presented to us was brief, but the basic premise is that your character wakes up in the morning to find himself in an unfamiliar environment and with a woman that claims to be your wife. From this starting point, your character proceeds to discover who he is through the course of the game. The Silent Dream developers have decided to divide the game up into eight chapters, each with their own main and side quests. Throughout these chapters your character will develop one of three jobs. As your job skills increase you will unlock new aspects to the game. In total, Grotesque is estimated to give gamers about 35 hours of gameplay, offering up a significant amount of lasting appeal. An example of this replay value is the variety in jobs, as well as how you approach your interactions with other characters in the game. However this replay factor seems to have been limited by the removal of all multiplayer gaming aspects. This multiplayer elimination has the potential to miss a large portion of the gaming community, which seems to be focused on playing role-playing games online. And, while the extended storyline of 35 hours of gameplay sounds great; having only three jobs seems to be an extremely limiting factor into the creation of an individual character.

The graphics engine used in Grotesque is called Vision, which is developed by a German Engine Design company called Trinigy. While some of the graphics still incomplete, the detail on the character models has the potential to produce a game that is visually appealing to the gamer. While the game is tentatively scheduled for a Q4 2006 release for the PC, the date depends on the signing of a publisher and is therefore subject to change. Grotesque looks like an interesting RPG game that seems to break away from the current trends, and should shake up the market with a good dose of light hearted gameplay.