Charlottesville, Virginia based developer Zojoi has released a new trailer for their upcoming fantasy adventure game Shadowgate. The trailer tells the story of the primary antagonist of the game, Warlock Lord Talimar the Black, a powerful mage who once fought for the side of good but was corrupted when his desire for power drove him to begin practicing dark magic. Talimar has since then hunted down and slain all but one of his former allies and has claimed dominion over the ancient Castle Shadowgate in order to search its depths for an artifact with untold magical power.
Shadowgate is a modernized re-release of the 1987 point-and-click adventure game by ICOM Simulations of the same name. The game, which initially launched on home computers of the era such as Atari ST and Commodore Amiga and was later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System as well as the Game Boy Color, became extremely popular over the lifetime of its many incarnations and helped to establish the point-and-click adventure genre.
Its legacy attracted the attention of Zojoi in 2012, who then launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund their version of the classic fantasy title. Rather than being a faithful recreation of the original, Zojoi describes the upcoming Shadowgate as a “re-imaging” of the original that will include a number of new environments and puzzles as well as modern features such as a customizable user interface and fully animated cinematic cut-scenes. While the game will feature a “retro mode” that uses the original soundtrack and 8-bit style visuals, Zojoi’s Shadowgate is otherwise an entirely modern take on the NES classic.
In Shadowgate, players take on the role of the “Seed of Prophecy,” a legendary hero foretold to defeat the Dark Lord Talimar. Players must navigate through the halls of Castle Shadowgate and solve a myriad of deadly puzzles and fight a horde of dangerous enemies in order to stop the malicious warlock from assembling a mythical artifact known as the Staff of Ages, a relic capable of destroying the entire world of Tyragon.
Shadowgate is slated to launch on August 21, 2014 for Windows and Mac OSX PCs as well as Android and iOS mobile devices. Three different pre-order versions of the game are currently available, with the basic game coming at a price of $15 and more expensive editions coming packages with wallpapers, the official soundtrack, and beta access.
You can watch the new trailer for Shadowgate below or on YouTube.