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An old relic is being reproduced, and it's as accurate as it was when it was initially created. We've received a signal from Earth requesting to deliver 300 copies to whoever is interested in this ancient piece of technology that earthlings often call VINYL DISK. You can get more information here We don't know how to use it, but maybe someone out there does. Please share this link and help us reach 300 people, so that our printers can get enough power to deliver it to whoever is in need. https://www.diggersfactory.com/vinyl/231510/kiiro-the-eternal-castle-remastered As always, we're counting on you. Over and out.
22 of July, 2020 - recent news from a distant planet have announced that the memories can now be accessed through a "Nintendo Switch" device. Though it certainly seems like a very ancient piece of technology, it appears that it might be capable to inject the experience through any human mind.
N__I__N__T__E__N__D__O______S__W__I__T__C__H______W__E__B__S__I__T__E
The experience is entering and affecting human dreams and emotions in subtle ways already. Here are some of the remote transcripts that we have been able to intercept from planet Earth:
[quote]"Feels like a dream of the games I grew up with...clearly tries to evoke feelings of a time when videogames were these strange, thorny things" -Dominic Tarason (Rock Paper Shotgun)
"It's an absorbing, ultimately rewarding title with many cool setpieces, and it isn't afraid to be retro in its design rather than just pay lip service to the aesthetic." -Stuart Gipp (Retronauts)
"It's one of the most evocative worlds I've seen in a game despite the 2-bit style." -Sam Greer (Eurogamer)
'The overall effect is uncanny.' "I felt like I had been transported back in time to a simpler, noticeably more cyan and magenta world." -David Wildgoose (GameSpot)
"Artistically, The Eternal Castle Remastered is superb." -Brad Gallaway (Gamecritics)
"Developers have done everything to challenge the senses and everything we understand about video games." -Matt S. (Digitally Downloaded)[/quote]
To any survivors out there, beware. Apparently this device might cause to immerse yourself or speedrun through levels featuring random events, encounters, traps, riddles and exploration, in a semi-procedural world. The experiences might change you in ways that we are not able to predict. If any of you are in possession of such a device, please be extremely cautious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Z7XbuaMMw
The memory on the "Nintendo Switch" device can already be accessed through the Americas, and will be soon released in Europe and Australia on August 21st. Only then we shall know our true destiny.
To learn more, visit: http://www.theeternalcastle.net/
The Eternal Castle Twitter: @EternalCastle87
The Eternal Castle Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/3cJdnfE
We have an important announcement to make. Please read carefully to avoid magnetic A.I. interferences.
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Over and out
[end transmission]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/963450/The_Eternal_Castle_REMASTERED/
[incoming transmission]
[incoming transmission]
> If anyone can read me, this is the main headquarters communication system.
We have sent many soldiers, and most of them have died. However the meditation implant seems to have created some kind of global dream network that subconsciously taught us what is happening down there. We now believe that this planet is indeed hostile and presents a series of issues that need to be solved ASAP.
> We have noticed that many units BELIEVED that they have captured the AI. That is incorrect. The AI tricked them into thinking that what they were experiencing was real through corrupted meditation shrines. These assets will make anyone believe that death is only the beginning and that anything experienced after that will somehow re-wind death back to the last visited shrine.
Our specialists have decoded the truth. The only way to get the mother A.I. and bring her back to us is to reach her without ever experiencing death. By pressing the SHIFT or BACK/SELECT command on the ship's main menu after completing the whole dream, you will have the ability to be sent in a special expedition without the possibility to predict the future, perceiving multiple levels of reality within several layers of interaction.
Only one reoccurring side-effect: it appears that although the world remains consistent, some of the living beings act differently. As if they were somehow able to move through multiple awakening loops. That means that every loop will become more and more tiring, therefore it will be much harder to bring the A.I. back home without experiencing real death on each run.
> Having warned the receiver about this undeniable threat, we hope that your next expedition will be far more safe.
Do not make the A.I. fool you with her mind tricks. We need her back, our whole civilization depends on you.
[end transmission]
It has been a quite difficult ride, many have lived the whole dream already, and not many have reached the real castle after awakening from the dream. But most of all, very few have been able to kill the Tea Master.
I have seen the Tea Master slay many, hundreds, several dozen times, but only a couple were able to beat him in a fair melee fight.
Grab an axe, hammer, or mace, and try to kill him.
If you think the fight might be too easy, fight him with your bare fists.
If you think that isn't really a challenge, try no items as well.
This zen martial arts master will not bother you if you don't bother him, and he has nothing to offer other than a single glider fragment that he will give you no matter what.
But if you're up to the challenge, try to beat his ass. Let us know if you succeed, and if you want, feel free to post some proof with some video links in the comments section.
Our suggestion is to do this while dreaming, not when you're awake.
Good luck,
The Eternal Castle team
Thank you for following us through this journey! It's been a very good ride, and our only hopes is that you will enjoy the result at least a fraction of how much we enjoyed creating it.
Enough talk. Buckle up, we are now getting close to the stratosphere, and ready to land.
3...
2...
1---
https://store.steampowered.com/app/963450/The_Eternal_Castle_REMASTERED/
[incoming transmission]
We received information about the world, and its pretty threatning. Not only the civilizations that occupy the lands are for the most part hostile, they are in desperate need of power sources such as the GLIDERS that are powering your ship.
As you probably know, GLIDERS are powerful elements that we find in life, they are unique patterns that travel across our universe, the only form of perpetual motion that we are aware of so far.
Glider A: (teleport unit)
Glider B: (Aerospike Engine)
Glider C: (Digital Nanoelectronic)
Glider D: (TPS element)
It is vital that you do not lose them and that you arrive on land safe, before reaching the mother AI that we all need to get back.
These are some of the threats that you should be aware of:
There are only two and a half more weeks left before we release the game to the public, and this weeks post will be about the world design, what went into it, how it evolved, and where we got our inspirations from.
Here is a personal story we would like to share with you.
This is a story of a kid who once found a light blue floppy disk in a dusty drawer in his old house. Because there weren't that many videogame disks just laying around, and especially no internet connection where he was from in the countryside in the early 90s, he often hoped that one day one of the boring old MS Dos software disks from his dad's office would magically turn into an incredible game that he hadn't played before.
This light blue floppy he found looked like one of those old software disks, except that its label was ripped off, and the front was partially broken (the metal part of the disk would easily rip off, but it would still work).
The moment he turned on his 486, inserted the floppy in the A: drive, heard the satisfying loading sound, and saw the screen turn black, he knew that he was going to start a journey into the unknown. An adventure that would change his life forever in ways that he would not be able to predict.
The thing that struck him initially was being blinded by those powerful cyan and magenta colors in front of his face. Not much of what he saw made sense, not a lot of shapes, sounds or images worked at all, and as a matter of fact, he was actually pretty convinced that the game itself was probably broken (or perhaps it was pirated in a way that the vga/ega color palettes were removed to make the whole game folder fit in a 720Kb floppy drive).
The game looked a lot like wide shots from a movie, but he could move the main character through beautiful, atmospheric landscapes, or terrifying dungeons and buildings from the distant future. He was immediately immersed.
He played for hours, non-stop. His parents weren't home that day, therefore his 1-hour-limit-per-day rule would not apply. So he kept going. So many emotions, so much depth, so much variety of actions made him feel like this wasn't just an ordinary action game, it was a dynamic story. A personal experience told through the eyes of someone who went through many life journeys, an experience that was able to connect on a human level more than any other media he's ever seen before.
One day he stopped playing, he turned off his PC, and removed the floppy from the drive. There was only one problem. The metal piece of the floppy remained stuck inside the computer, in a way that when he turned on the computer again it would display the message: "Boot failed: could not read the boot disk".
He was mortified, terrified. He could not tell his parents because he felt so bad about breaking something he cared so much about, so he didn't. As a result, his dad sent the computer to get fixed, the metal piece was gone, and all he had left was a broken unusable floppy.
Eventually that floppy got thrown out, so he never got to play that game again. Such an easy thing to fix, but he was too young at the time to know what to do. He kept thinking about it ever since.
Giulio and Daniele brainstorming some early gameplay mechanics in our our garage (2016)
After decades, I decided to craft The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] as a homage to that experience. Me and a close friend of mine (Manfredi Montemaggi) locked ourselves in a house during a couple of rainy weeks in the middle of the Maremma swamps, and built the world in a way that it felt as close as possible to everything that we loved about cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, mixed with what could be remembered about this unique game experience.
After a couple of years in the making with a tiny inexperienced yet determined team (Giulio Perrone, Daniele Vicinanzo), after struggles, fights, and very tough challenges, what came out was this. It's not perfect, but it's something we ended up being very proud of.
Hope that if you end up trying this game you will journey through an adventure that will mark you at least a small fraction of how much it marked us.
We will keep updating you every week until release, with more stories about the world, the making, and what went through the creation of this simple, yet extraordinary project.
Over and out,
The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] team
Thank you to everyone who shared the trailer for The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]!
Since we did receive a lot of great comments about the soundtrack, I would like to take a moment to thank Giacomo Langella and OGRE Sound for delivering some unique music inspired by soundtracks from the past, that still scratch our memories as if we heard them a long time ago.
As Jordan Mechner (creator of the original Prince of Persia and Karateka) writes about in his journals, developers at the time would struggle with their own soundtracks.
They would try to make appealing music with a beeping PC speaker, compose it, code it, and accepted it, while dreaming about epic soundtracks made with real synths and orchestras. Yet, their limitations gave us the root of what they were actually aiming for. A root that made us live worlds like the ones in Zelda, Mario, Intifada, Castelvania, or even Prince of Persia itself.
We got those roots and elaborated them through our fractured imagination, thinking of how developers used to listen to John Williams, or Vangelis as they played the few games that were out there (including their own). Hopefully our soundtrack will serve as a homage to those people, the ones who inspired us to make what we are making today.
As a sign of appreciation, here is a track by Giacomo Langella that we used in the game, hope you enjoy it!
https://soundcloud.com/kiiromusic/the-eternal-castle-ost-ship-preview
It's been a long journey, but we're finally close to the finish line! After years of development, we are proud to announce that The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] is coming out on January 5th, celebrating the 32 year anniversary from the original edition from 1987. https://youtu.be/OkWdaz6Ut2s Check out the trailer and be sure to add us to your Wishlist. That would mean a lot to us!
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