Here we go again with Kickstarters making spiritual successors to older games. This round is a second chance for psychological adventure games, in case Shadow of The Eternals doesn’t cut it.
Shades of Sanity is a new horror game in the vein of Sanitarium, Amnesia and Eternal Darkness. You play schizophrenic Joseph Springer, who attempts to escape treatment to reconcile with his wife in Virginia only to black out and wake up in an unreal world. As his medicines run out, his hallucinations increase, leaving him to wonder how much of what he is seeing is real or imagined.
As you may have guessed, the studio behind this project, Sword and Spirit is comprised of people who previously worked on Sanitarium. Lead programmers Rob Seres and Keith Leonard both worked on Sanitarium and then designed several similar horror games that never saw the light of day (under the Myst and Werewolf franchises.) Much like Precursor Games, Sword and Spirit hope to bring psychological horror adventure games back to the forefront after dropping out of the spotlight for long.
Shades of Sanity’s Kickstarter is looking for $ 200,000, and perhaps in reaction to Kickstarter’s own warning against stretch goals, have not posted stretch goals themselves, only hinting at Mac as a possibility. The game will be coming to Windows, with some leeway for lower end computers, like older games used to have. The game will place a huge emphasis on puzzles and exploration, but the puzzles will not be too punishing. One major difference from Sanitarium, it will be using a first person perspective instead of an isometric view. Sword and Spirit explains this is not quite to attempt to fit in with the times, but precisely because they received so many complaints about Sanitarium's isometrics. This may possibly be the best way to move the genre forward.
I do think it’s about time for psychological horror games to come back in a big way, but I also have concerns about the way mentally disabled are going to be depicted in this game. It is a little too early to judge this project with the scanty information, but it is hoped, if this game goes into production, that the team is sensitive to the needs of people with schizophrenia in how they depict Joe. Maybe they can get alpha testers to go to that direction. We’ll catch up to this crowdfund again come September.
Source: Kickstarter
