The Dark Phantom is a third-person shooter with comic styled graphics by Tehran-based developers Pardis Game Studio, and is now reaching out to Kickstarter to reach completion.
Many times indie developers try to make a name for themselves in the industry by doing something off the wall with their games. Pardis Game Studio are looking to take the opposite approach with their upcoming title The Dark Phantom by instead aiming to compete with the big boys with their own take on the third-person shooter genre.
“Unlike common indie games that are solely concentrate on new mechanics without paying attention to gameplay quality, our goal was to create an indie game with standard gameplay,” said a representative for the team in a recent press release. ” […]we wanted to bring our gameplay level to modern video game’s standards. By analyzing modern third person shooter games, we cherry-picked main features of these games like a cover system, over-the-shoulder camera and CQC. By using these features we deliver fast paced action to players.”
The Dark Phantom is Pardis Game Studio’s first attempt at an international release, and it certainly is an ambitious attempt. So ambitious, in fact, that despite the team’s recent success in obtaining greenlight status on Steam they have also had to turn to crowdfunding to try and complete their game via the ever-popular Kickstarter.
The Dark Phantom’s atmosphere is one that aptly fits its name. Dark and broody, the game features a comic-styled aesthetic heavily inspired by Frank Miller’s Sin City, among other sources, and this shows clearly in the game’s demo footage.
Fans of Darkman and other classic noir-styled comics will likely feel right at home in the universe, where the team hopes their more true-to-life main character can give them an edge on some of the more over-the-top superheroes out there. The game makes use of the Unreal engine, and the team is doing their best to integrate every feature they can into the game on their limited budget.
Will scope be an issue for the team? The game certainly is ambitious. Despite the promising nature of much of the available demo footage and screenshots, the game’s developers are obviously facing somewhat of a language barrier in their attempt to take their small team to the global marketplace. Likewise, being a small independent developer, tackling such a mass-market project with so many planned features, both graphically and gameplay-wise, will undoubtedly stretch the team to their creative and technical limits.
If a noir-themed third person shooter sounds like your kind of game, The Dark Phantom’s kickstarter has only just begun, and has quite a ways to go before it will see its funding goals. Though the game is initially planned for a PC-only release, stretch goals include Mac, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 releases.