The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games had a lot working against them: they were niche, they were relatively unknown, and perhaps most damning of all, the original, Shadow of Chernobyl was pretty buggy on release. Despite that, however, the series went on to become something of a cult classic, and people were pretty depressed when the franchise’s developer, GSC Game World, closed because it meant we’d never see S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
We’re still never going to get S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but the blow is lessened by the fact that a large number of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s creators have gotten together, formed a new company called West Games, and started a Kickstarter for a game called Areal.
The game is based on the novel of the same name by Sergey Tarmashev, a well-known writer of fantasy and post-apocalyptic fiction, and is billed by the studio as “the definitive spiritual successor to the cult hit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.”
“Areal is a new video game that’s being developed by the people behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R.,” says the game’s Kickstarter page. “It features a massive and intricately detailed open world environment that is extremely varied and colorful, even though it’s set in a post-apocalyptic setting. Areal depicts a future where civilization has fallen apart due to an unearthly material called Metamorphite, which eventually spreads, corrupts and infects the whole world. The source of Metamorphite comes from a meteor that impacted the earth long ago, and it is the site of constant conflict and bloodshed.”
West Games is shooting for $50,000 in funding, and impressively, they have already gotten more than half of that at the time of this writing, despite the fact that the page has only been up for two days. It’s an ambitious project, but an intriguing one. Hopefully, we’ll see more from Areal in the near future.
