Blackroom, the new project being developed by John Romero and Adrian Carmack under Night Work Games, is a first-person shooter that holds a lot of promise. Romero and Carmack are known for their role in bringing massively popular franchises Doom and Quake into the video game industry, so Blackroom comes with high expectations.
Night Work Games launched a Kickstarter page for Blackroom earlier in the week, with the crowdfunding campaign looking to raise $700,000. The page described the game as "a visceral, varied and violent shooter that harkens back to classic FPS play."
The project, however, has already experienced a hiccup, as funding for the campaign was canceled by the developers.
In its Kickstarter page, Night Work Games wrote that it is now developing a playable demo of Blackroom, which will show the features that make the title unique. However, the trade-off is that the crowdfunding campaign will be put on hold while the studio will work on the gameplay demo.
The reasoning behind the cancellation of the Kickstarter campaign is that the development of the gameplay demo will take longer than the time left in the campaign. Night Work Games decided it would be best to suspend the fundraising until the gameplay demo is ready, at which point a new campaign will be launched.
The studio noted that it is making this decision as gamers have clamored for a demo, perhaps to convince them to support the Kickstarter campaign. Night Work Games admitted it should have developed the demo first before launching the campaign.
Night Work Games will still honor backer achievements once the campaign has been re-launched, and for those who have supported the canceled campaign and will do so in the next one, the studio hinted that there will be a bonus.
At the time of the cancellation of the campaign, Blackroom already $131,052 out of its $700,000 goal from 2,287 backers in less than a week. Whether or not the campaign will see more success upon its relaunch with a playable demo remains to be seen.
"It should only take us a few months to bring all of that together. It won't be a full level, but it will be enough gameplay to show off the speed and all the other things we're talking about," said Romero in an interview.
