Monochroma from Nowhere Studios is an industrial-dystopian platformer that sees players taking on the role of a young boy who must get his brother to safety. Players will have to carry the young boy through some fairly perilous situations while solving puzzles along the way.
The game could best be described as Limbo meets the mechanics of I Am Alive without any of the stupidity.
Monochroma also relegates the storytelling to visual elements and artistic cues as opposed to having any dialogue... so players will uncover the story through their actions and the discovery of the world through engaging gameplay, as opposed to having everything dolled out in long or boring narrative sequences. I can live with that.
The visual style of the game is very similar to Limbo, no doubt, but at the same time there are also some distinctly varied graphical differences between the two games, mostly in the settings, the animations and the almost movie-like appeal to the overall structure of the pacing and progression of the hero's journey.
Nowhere Studios currently has a two-fold hill-climb ahead of them. First of all, they're trying to get their game Kickstarted; they need six more months of development and they're still about $60,000 short of their final goal. The Istanbul, Turkey-based studio has been working on the game for nearly two years already and the money would basically finish up and polish off the game for digital distribution.
While $60,000 is still a heck of a lot of money, they could easily hit that goal if they just get enough media attention and support... but given gaming media's love for flashy things and Michael Bay-sized 'splosions, it's a tough call to tell if Monochroma will hit its goal in time or if enough big players will pay enough attention to spur the financial wave of change they need to reach the $80k limit in just under 31 days.
The second hurdle the game faces is, of course, with Steam's Greenlight. Getting a game on Greenlight isn't difficult, but getting a game greenlit isn't the easiest thing in the world. The team will need just as much media attention from their Kickstarter for the Greenlight process as well if they want to see the light of day on Steam's store.
Nowhere Studios easily has a very compelling game under their belt and I would love to see more of this game, or better yet, to see it available on digital distribution portals across the interwebs.
If you would like to help pledge some financial support to see Monochroma get finished, feel free to head on over to their Official Kickstarter Page. If you want to see this game arrive on Steam where you can throw money at the developers for a finished product, feel free to visit the Official Steam Greenlight Page.
