Of Pawns & Kings makes move to Kickstarter
Some games take longer than others to make. The most basic can be completed in a matter of months, while many can take years. Then then are games like Ingo Stuckenbrock's of pawns & kings, which has been in some form of development for over twenty-five years! At long last the project appears poised to reach its conclusion, though it's going to need some help on Kickstarter if it's to finally reach the finish line.
The game follows the story of Nikolas, a 17-year-old innocent who has grown up living in a beautifully furnished old shipwreck on an "idyllic tropical beach." With only vague dreams and no memories of his mother, and his father largely absent and visiting only occasionally, Nik has been raised by his grandfather Erasmus, a "very friendly, but somehow crazy old man [that] Nik loves very very much." This peaceful, sheltered life is suddenly interrupted when a stranger arrives and begins a "heated discussion with Erasmus, which ends with the disappearance of both of them." Now Nik is forced to leave everything he's ever known behind and venture out for the first time in his life to search for his missing grandfather. Before long he finds himself "drawn deeper and deeper into a battle of kings, having the power to destroy him and his whole family."
Described as "Monkey Island meets Riven meets (Jim Henson's) Labyrinth," the game is a visually rich, classic-styled third-person point-and-click adventure with "gently modernized" features such as an icon menu when interacting with objects, a quick travel map and hotspot highlighter. Sometimes you'll even be accompanied by a "sassy and impertinent toucan named Fitzgeraldo," who is able to talk and provide assistance when needed, although the bird's intentions in helping Nik "don't work like they should" most of the time. Along the way Nik will "discover many surprising things about his family" and encounter "many diverse scenarios, some of them beautiful, some more frightening." He will also meet a variety of characters in his travels, some "friendly [and] fascinating" and some of them "unscrupulous." If he's to deal with all the challenges in his path, the young protagonist will need to grow up fast, "taking responsibility and coping with fear and prejudice."
In order to see the game's decades-long development odyssey through to fruition, Stuckenbrock has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise €50,000 by August 2nd. If successful, we can finally begin pointing and clicking our way through of pawns & kings as early as January 2023 on Windows, Mac and Linux.
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