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