The Black Glove is "shelved" as developers move on to other things

I couldn't really claim to understand what was going on with The Black Glove when it was revealed last fall, but I liked what I saw. I was clearly in the minority, however, as the follow-on Kickstarter didn't achieve even half its goal of $550,000, despite playing on the development team's connection to the BioShock games. Despite that failure, the studio said it would "fight like hell to keep it from being canceled," but now it seems the fight is over.

"We put together a gameplay demo that showed how you used The Black Glove artifact to explore the narrative rich environments of The Equinox and unlock its secrets. We brought it to GDC and PAX East and showed it to publishers behind closed doors," Creative Director Joe Fielder wrote. "We garnered some interest, but didn’t find the perfect glass slipper we were looking for and, understandably, began to lose key people to full-time work elsewhere."

The good news, such as it is, is that the door remains open for a return to the project at some point in the future. "We’ve invested thousands of hours and considerable thought and emotion into the project, so it’s hard to step away, but it’s not forever," Fielder continued. "Design legend Paul Neurath said to us recently, 'In my experience, good ideas don’t have expiration dates.' They’re words we’ve really taken to heart, so we intend to return to The Black Glove later when we can do it right."

Speaking of Neurath, Fielder also revealed that he and concept artist Robb Waters have joined OtherSide Entertainment to work on Underworld Ascendant, the spiritual successor to the great Ultima Underworld RPGs, that took in more than $850,000 on Kickstarter earlier this year.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.