There is not a game in the massive index of things I'm currently looking forward to that I hope fulfills on its promise more than this one.
Jasper Byrne of Superflat Games might be a name you recognize due to his recent hit, Lone Survivor. Lone Survivor is an apocalyptic, side-scrolling, survival horror game with a gorgeous, almost mosaic, handmade pixel art style. In case you haven't heard of it: it's wonderful and it's also only $10.
On the Superflat blog, Jasper states that he thinks, "games are the highest level of art being explored at the moment, but are still in their infancy. I feel like we’re on the cusp of something incredible, like the first tentative steps of silent movies into talkies." and his passionate work certainly echoes his thoughts on the medium.
Recently he began to show off rough prototypes for his next untitled project. "Basically it’s a combination of all the ideas I’ve been shooting around since the later parts of making LONE SURVIVOR, from dungeon crawler to sci-fi head-messing to whimsical platformer… or another way of looking at it may be Zelda x Demon’s Souls?"
Byrne intends to have the game feature two-handed combat, equipable weapons, and rolling. The characters will also be entirely sprite based, and he is currently in the process of writing a new engine to support his ambition.
The post visually details the progression his prototype has taken, from top-down to more detailed 3D environments. You can check out a few of the screenshots below in the gallery.
Given that Lone Survivor took over four years to come out, I'm sure the wait for this game is going to be agonizing. Still, if the excitement doesn't kill me I think I can begrudgingly put up with waiting however many years this takes to release. We at PCGIA will definitely be in touch with Byrne in the future.
