Summary
- Developer AgeOfGames defies odds by releasing a Game Boy Advance game in 2024, resurrecting a project from 2002.
- AgeOfGames' founder Fabio Belsanti reflects on the challenges faced during Kien's development and subsequent delays.
- Despite delays and setbacks, Belsanti looks forward to potential sequels in the future.
Who releases a Game Boy game in 2024? The handheld system is long defunct and languishes unsupported by Nintendo, which has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:recently le🦋ft far newe𝔉r consoles to rot in a move that made most people very angry. But who was still playing their Nintendo DSes? 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Except me, of course. And surel🌟y even fewer people plaಞy their Game Boys?
Developer AgeOfGames has decided to release a Game Boy Advance game in 2024. The studio started life as PM Studios Italy, with a staff that founder Fabio Belsanti describes as “young idealists”. 22 years later, Belsanti is still at the helm, and the studio has circled back to its unreleased game from 2002, Kien.
“Today, not as young or as dreamy, I am ꦬstill in charge of this ship of fools with hell on their heels and a thousand storms behind them,” Belsanti tells me over email. He’s certainly got a way with words.
If you Googled Kien before reading this article, you might have found . The finished game feels exactly how t💎hat clip looks. But what has AgeOfGames been doing for the 22 years since Kien was supposed to be released? T♊widdling its thumbs and waiting for Nintendo to announce more Game Boy Advance support? Quite the contrary.
AgeOfGame’s next game, Etrom-The Astral Essence (a multimedia affair consisting of the action-RPG, a comic, a novel, and a TTRPG), was beset with misfortune. Belsanti claims that the game’s publisher didn’t help with marketing, didn’t pay the developer any royaltiesﷺ, and went bankrupt. Since these two failed launches, AgeOfGames has transformed into a studio tackling every conceivable aspect of video games.
"We detest the global historical reality of the hierarchicඣal division into social classes defined on the basis of money, prestige and power." - Fabio Belsanti, founder of AgeOfGames
It produces on the theory of game development which 🌳is partnerඣed by the Italian state broadcaster Rai. It works in schools to (and helps kids compete in esports competitions). It’s also developing games, from a new sci-fi IP NumeN (another cross-media affair), to republishing its old games on Steam. Oh, and working on releasing Kien for the Game Boy Advance.
But the path was never smooth, even back in the early ‘00s. “Kien's development was devastating on a psychological and physical level,” Belsanti explains. “For about two years there were almost never any days off and very often we also worked at night. But aside from the loss of a few years of biological life, we were thrilled to be able to make our first real video game which also had rather ambitious goals and features.”
From a gameplay perspective, Belsanti believes the team achieved its goals. But at what cost? After all their hard work, three publishers pulled out of enormous contracts due to the expenses involved in making GBA car🧔tridges (Belsanti estimates it was around $15 a copy back then) and the fact that backing a new IP like Kien was therefore too big a risk.
The game was cast aside, the team exhausted and disappointed. But this experience 𒁃has undoubtedly shaped the studio’s future, lighting an anticapitalist fire under Belsanti’s feet that pushes him, urges him onwards.
"Reopening the project again technically and art🧔istically is no🐼w impossible." - Fabio Belsanti, founder of AgeOfGames
“We love being independent, but we dislike the contradiction of having to operate like a capitalist company to be so,” he explains. “We detest the global historical reality of the hierarchical division into social classes defined on the basis of money, prestig🥂e and power which are based on the illusions of the increasingly complex and manipulative propaganda of the dominant elites in conflict with each other. We continue to believe and dream in a world that, starting from a sincere international union, can become completeไly without borders and barriers.
“We believe that games and video games are and can continue to be fundamental in this historical process that will arrive at a narrative crossroads, in which humanity will either see the greatest utopias, or will experience a thermonucleꦆar strategic war or even still may fall into a more mediocre, grotesque and ‘quie💎t’ dystopia previously imagined by countless movies, novels and of course, video games.”
His dreams for the world are no less lofty than his ambitions for the video ga✃mes he makes.
What Changed For Kien?
Belsanti credits the phenomenon of retro gaming and the descending costs of Game Boy cartౠridge production for Kien’s resurrection. And it is a resurrection, rather than a remake or reworking of the original game. Kien was finished in 2002. It was just never released.
“If I could, I would have liked to reopen the project and make some changes [or] improvements (after all, in addition to having aged, I too have changed as a game designer in the last 20 years),” Belsanti says. “Unfortunately, however, reopening the project again technically and artistically is now impossible, analysing an꧋d modifying such an old code would have taken a long time and could have triggered unwanted behaviour with a consequent fu🎉rther delay in publication.”
This is why Belsanti calls this project “video game archaeology”. He also calls the game itself a “pre-soul🌃s-like-game”, and I’m inclined to agree. Despite being a 2D side-scrolling combat platformer, there’s a lot of similarities between it and Dark Souls, aesthetic notwithstand♎ing. Behind the colourful palette, Kien has hard-as-nails fights, a convoluted narrative, and the same air of mystery that FromSoftware revels in.
But there was another delay for Kien. After AgeOfGames partnered with publisher Incub8 to finally release the game, the pairing was hit by the great chip shortage ♌of 2022. Therefore, it was delayed again, until 2024.
This delay may have helped it clinch the , if it’s any consolation to Belsa♛nti.
Releasing A Game 22 Years In The Making
Now that the game has finally been released, how does Belsanti feel? As the s♌ole survivor of the PM Studios Italy team who developed the game, is he relieved, proud, or just glad it’s all over? Most of all, it turns out, Belsanti is looking forward.
“On a strategic and practical level, we have already laid the foundations to give lifeไ to a spiritual sequel to Kien: a project called Astral Equilibrium which, before meeting Incube8 and having the possibility of releasing it on GBA, we had already started to develop, reaching a very first demo for PC and Switch,” Belsanti explains. “However, when the possibility of publishing Kien on GBA arose, we decided to put Astral Equilibrium on hold.
“After the first release of Kien we hope to be able to proceed (♉perhaps by creating a KickStarter campaign) with Astral Equilibrium or who knows, maybe even imagine a Kien 2!”
With an AgeOfGames development team that resembles the ship of Theseus and Belsanti’s two dec🔯ades of game development learnings, a sequel would undoubtedly be an interesting affair. Would it embrace the pre-Soulslike label with a 3D third-person take on Kien’s bright, magical world or stick to two dimensions and learn from the likes of Hollow Knight? If I’ve learned anything from my emails with Belsanti, it would be wholly𓂃 original.
I’m not sure that a sequel wouldn’t lose some charm, though. Kien was released for the Game Boy Advance because the code was written, 22 years ago, for the console. Tweaking it could have had disastrouไs effects. I’ve loved digging out my old SP to play this resurrected game. The physicality of retro consoles is unmatched in the modern era. Sure, my Steam Deck can play Cyberpunk 2077, but can it fit in my pocket? Kien works in 2024 because it feels like a game from 2002. A sequel would have to radically change a lot of the game’s heart, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Street Uni X Is𒆙 A R💖etro Tony Hawk’s-Style Unicycling Game
Ever wanted to pop a few tricks on a unicycle? Who am I kid🌟ding, of course you have
