The Eternal Cylinder will roll onto hard drives on September 30th
What Horace's friends called him in college
The Eternal Cylinder was first shown as a prototype six years ago. Back then, Adam described it as "Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg by way of Philip José Farmer, Icepick Lodge and Hieronymus Bosch, all set in the shadow of a hungry horizon." The prototype was a personal project of ACE Team co-founder Carlos Bordeu, who said that he wasn't yet sure what you would do in the game moment to moment.
Now the game is reaching the end of its journey. ACE Team have announced you'll be able to flee the planetary rolling pin on September 30th.
Check out the release date announcement trailer, which explains where the game's design ended up:
You'll flee across the planetary surface pursued by an endless cylinder, just as expected. What changed is that the cylinder will come to rest at certain points after you've entered a new biome. This gives you time to explore and to evolve your creature, before you trigger something to cause the cylinder to begin moving again.
Alice B has taken a gander at The Eternal Cylinder a couple of times and came away with the conclusion that everything in it looks like a willy. I concur, although commenters seemed evenly split between those who agreed and those who, I presume, must be lying.
It's exciting to see a bold but rough prototype head towards release after so many years - and honestly, it's just exciting that ACE Team continue to make games that look like nothing else. Their next game was announced back in July, too: a return to the world of Zeno Clash with Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos.