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Hi everyone. Today we're diving into the story behind one of the year's most beautiful games, but first...
This week's top gaming news:
- Sony Group Corp. is shutting down Bluepoint Games, the studio behind well-regarded remakes like Demon's Souls for PlayStation 5. It's a shocking move that I'll talk about more in the future.
- Saudi Arabia's Scopely Inc. has bought a majority stake in Turkish studio Loom Games for as much as $1 billion
The Eternal Life of Goldman
The Eternal Life of Goldman, a new video game scheduled for release later this year, is striking because of its gorgeous 2D art and hand-drawn animations. The demo, which went up on Steam this week, showcases some slick platforming, pogo-stick gameplay inspired by the old Duck Tales games and some of the most beautiful animations ever produced in gaming.
It's also striking for another reason: The Eternal Life of Goldman stars an old man with a yarmulke, a rare and welcome choice of protagonist, especially during a time of rising antisemitism worldwide.
Put another way, there's finally a game for people like me: aging Jews with back problems.
"We wanted to do something fresh," Ilya Yanovich, the game's creative director, said in a recent interview.
I'd told him that it was refreshing to see a game delving into Jewish lore and characters, which aren't often explored in video games.
He said the fundamental question of the game, which features the titular Goldman on an adventure through a fantastical land as he hunts for treasure and battles ancient curses, is whether "a life full of disappointments and suffering is worth living" -- just about the most Jewish thing I've ever heard.
"When you deal with questions of life and death, it's natural to imply some religious materials into that as a mythology," Yanovich said. "We explored that a little bit more, and we were fascinated by one single piece of Jewish mythology. I'm afraid mentioning what it is exactly would be a major spoiler."
Yanovich, who lives in Belarus, runs Weappy, an independent game studio that he founded in 2015. Their first game, This Is the Police, was released a year later and did well enough to keep the studio operating.
They then began prototyping what would eventually become The Eternal Life of Goldman, which was envisioned as a platformer with a strong story and a hand-drawn animation style unlike anything else on the market. (The hit game Cuphead, which would come out in 2017, also used hand-drawn animation and helped solidify for Yanovich and his team that there was a market for games like this.)
Why a platformer? "To me a video game is when a little person goes from left to right and avoids obstacles," Yanovich said. "That's something very pure that I like."
After shelving the prototype for some other projects, they pivoted full-time to The Eternal Life in Goldman in 2019. Weappy, which has around 35 people working on the game, split the production costs with their publisher, THQ Nordic.
What none of them expected was that the game would take seven years.
"We decided early on that you can't really cut a lot of corners here," Yanovich said. "There are always compromises, but from the very beginning, we decided that we shouldn't jeopardize anything that makes this game what it is. If it takes way longer, more money, we'll figure it out."
The result is spectacular: a stunning collection of volcanic islands and ancient ruins that looks unlike any other game out there. The Eternal Life of Goldman is framed as a story between a mother and her (seemingly) hospitalized child, who narrate as the game unfolds. The details of Goldman's adventure sometimes change based on their conversations, sort of like the classic film The Princess Bride. Trailers have hinted that things get quite dark along the way.
It's also one of the very few games to explore Jewish themes (and perhaps the second video game ever made to feature a man in a yarmulke, following 2006's The Shivah), which is of great personal interest. Not a lot of games have featured characters with names like Hanoch and Nissim Klein.
Yanovich said he is of Jewish descent but that the religion wasn't a significant part of his life, largely due to growing up in the shadow of the Soviet Union, where antisemitism was common. Belarus once had a large Jewish population; almost all were killed in the Holocaust. "I knew and learned a little more later," he said,"but it wasn't really part of our family's identity."
A demo for The Eternal Life of Goldman went live on Steam Thursday, and players seem to be digging it so far. Yanovich expects that the full release will come later this year, although he isn't sure exactly when the game will land. He said that he hopes it does well enough to warrant a sequel, and that selling 500,000 copies in a year would be a good target, although "we do hope for more."
"We're 98% content complete," Yanovich said. "We don't have a release date yet. But we can see the end for the first time in seven years."
What to play this weekend
I'm curious to check out Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse, the sequel to a visual novel adventure game that I really enjoyed in 2023. It's a dramatic story set during summer vacation on an island in Japan where there are legends of mermaids (and curses), and reviews have been very good.
Got a news tip or story to share? You can reach Jason at jschreier10@bloomberg.net or confidentially at jasonschreier@protonmail.com.