Earlier this week, John Romero finally revealed his newest game project, following up a pretty silly Star Wars-riffing teaser video. The announcement was for a PC game called Blackroom, which will “hearken back to classic FPS play” and Romero would be developing with Id Software co-founder Adrian Carmack. The game went to Kickstarter and immediately got plenty of positive press- but as of today, it’s been put on hold.
Thankfully, the Kickstarter hasn’t been paused for any sweeping developmental reasons, or for internal strife related to Romero’s ideas about advertising, but rather because the team is responding to feedback about general desire for a playable demo. A solid demand, considering we’ve seen plenty of gaming Kickstarters that either predictably fell short or were over-funded and simply never delivered on time. Weird, huh?
It’s also a pretty reasonable demand considering Blackroom’s high-concept ideas and overall ambition. According to its Kickstarter, most of Blackroom will take place in a kind of holographic simulation setting, allowing for a variety of locations in the game, but also for players to use a special item to freeze time, move through walls, and generally interact with the physical environment in various ways. It’s a lot to take in, and a lot to deliver.
If nothing else, it’s refreshing to see players and prospective donators indicate they want some kind of deliverable from a company before donating money to a Kickstarter, and it’s even more refreshing to see said company respond in kind and give the people what they want. As of now, the funding is frozen at $131,052 out of $700,000 with 2,287 backers- a good start for a campaign only four days in. When it’ll resume remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: the gaming community has learned their lesson about being John Romero’s bitch.
