'SHADOW OF THE ETERNALS' Crowdfunding Drive

Okay, full disclosure, I didn't start doing this blog just to advertise things.  I'd like to think I'm 'above' that, and that I'm providing what readers I get with something more thought-provoking or entertaining, or at least distracting.  But right now, with this post, I'm straight-up just promoting something that demands money - your money, as well as my money and anyone else's money it can get - before it can be real.  Just so we're clear.

Shadow of the Eternals is a new survival horror title from Canadian start-up Precursor Games, targeted at an eventual release on PC and Wii U (and maybe other formats if it's a success).  It's also the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, one of the ultimate "oh, you MUST have played that one" titles of modern gaming, a personal favourite of mine, and something I honestly believed I'd never see again.  Why?

Because the modern game industry is goddamn broken, that's why.

Everything about the industry has grown so bloated and driven by marketing excess that new ideas simply don't get the chances to succeed like they did even only 1 console 'generation' ago.  The major publishers swallow up promising developers and handcuff their performance to sales stats, telling extremely talented artists and crafters to follow the Generic Shooter Blueprint to the letter, time after time.  If you're not Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, you'll be expected - nay, demanded - to perform like them and heaven help you if you don't.  If any devs out there really do want to make something different...well, they could keep it cheap and try for an indie release on Steam or XBLA, which is great if it's a retro-styled platformer with a minimalist 'arty' visual style, but for anything more elaborate, they'd have to get desparate.

As it turns out, we're living in a world where something as awesome on paper as Shadow of the Eternals needs to get desperate.

You can visit the game's website or its YouTube channel and browse around if you want an in-depth understanding of what it's all about (and a better explanation as to why it's doing crowdfunding), but the short of it is, you start off playing as a detective trying to get to the bottom of a cult-related mass murder, and as you scratch away at parts of that story you're taken back in time to fill the shoes of another person tangled up in a presumably related series of events, which involves much puzzle-solving, running away from monsters, and if its predecessor is any indication, the game turning heel on you and pretending to break down just to wind up your nerves a little more.  The first planned 'episode' pits the player as a handmaiden in the court of Erzebet Bathory, long the historical inspiration behind many a vampire tale.

Look, I'm as leery of crowdfunding as you no doubt are, especially in the wake of the Veronica Mars/Zach Braff nonsense; I think I've previously contributed to a whole whopping 2 Kickstarters, only 1 of which succeeded.  But in this case, I fully sympathise with the reasons behind the choice to use it, and...and I'd just really like to play a well-made, smart horror adventure that doesn't devolve into a co-op shoot-em-up.  Can we all agree this is a thing worth fighting for?

If you're interested, pledges can be made through a PayPal portal on the game's main site (no Kickstarter since there's apparently some kind of restriction on non-US/UK companies opening one) (UPDATE: They sorted things out with Kickstarter, and I've added the relevant link to the bottom of the post!).  I'll put the links up again at the bottom of the post.

Thanks for your time.

Game Site | YouTube Channel | Kickstarter page