Gi - It’s hard to deny the success Kickstarter has had for many game studios with plenty of vision but not enough funds. Double Fine Productions made it work for them (twice) and it even helped launch the Ouya. Often, though, Kickstarter is used to get that initial shot in the arm for a studio. Goals are set, reward tiers become harder to resist as the dollar amount rises and a promise of an eventual game is made. Developers need that money so they can storyboard, build engines, program, hire artists and a million other things. Very seldom does a project allow players a chance to get their hands on a game well before it becomes a final project. InterWave Studios is doing just that with their upcoming game Dark Matter.
GG3 dives into the holiday spirit of sales by looking at the worst of the crop first. To ensure no one will ever need to go looking for these games pulled from Steam, some gameplay will be shown from both Ashes Cricket 2013 and Dark Matter. That last one is back on Valve's platform, but...just don't.
GIZORAMA - On paper, Dark Matter sounds great. A 2.5D shooter that attempts to blend the horror and atmosphere of titles like Dead Space with the exploration and structure of industry changers like Super Metroid is a recipe that sounds like it would yield nothing but a guaranteed success. However, despite some genuinely atmospheric elements, Dark Matter unfortunately fails on what it sets out to do at almost every turn leaving in its wake a mess of disappointment and frustration.
After being woken from Cryo-sleep by a seemingly sentient AI, your nameless female protagonist is given little to no back story. All that is shared is that you are some sort of engineer who has been kept alive by the ship in order to save it from an alien threat. Despite brimming with many genre clichés, the opening gambit is sold relatively well here. At first, you are interested in learning more about yourself and the world around you as well as the mysterious AI that seems to be your only companion amidst the isolation. Unfortunately however, you will soon realise that these questions will never be answered to a satisfactory level. It seems that this set up is more akin to a plot device than the origin of an interesting tale meaning any interest soon dissipates
Look, we realize the ending spurred controversy and bugs make their presence felt, yet there's a solid game here from InterWave.
