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.