Wealthy Shadows: Tangiers A-Thieves KS Success

It is a very good day. The week is half-over, birds are chirping delightful sunshine songs, and a broken world of shadow, chaos, and deceit has successfully sloughed its way out of Kickstarter's collective womb. These facts are joyously skipping hand-in-hand - as you'd expect - but the third is especially thrilling. Tangiers, whose principle influences include Thief (far more so than the new Thief, based on what I've seen) and surrealism spiked with potent hits of the Dada Movement and David Lynch, looks utterly magnificent. Its Kickstarter was looking a little touch-and-go there for a bit, but I'm happy to report that it crossed the finish line £7,000 above its goal.

Tangiers' Kickstarter closed out at £42,006 - a single stretch goal beyond its original £35,000 goalpost. This means that we'll get the full game and optional developer commentary, ala Valve's more recent single-player efforts. A hardcore difficulty mode would've slipped hungry hands around our necks at £45,000, but oh well. At least we get something - and quite a bit of something at that.

On top of that, Alex Harvey and co have announced a special standalone prequel adventure for backers, which will come out halfway through the game's development. It's Harvey's way of both testing features and making sure he doesn't have to spoil the main story before the finished product is even out. He explained:

"Set up as a prequel to the main game, a self-contained experience that leads directly onto the main of Tangiers. A tightly-nit cross section of Tangiers, an opportunity to showcase, test and garner feedback without impacting upon the experience of the main game."

"The areas, narrative and majority of the characters involved will be unique to the prequel - it won't just be a demo, it will be it's own 'adventure' within the Tangiers setting. About a fifth of the size of the main game, it'll be set around two smaller city areas and the surrounding landscape."

So that's exciting - at least, if you contributed. If not, though, Tangiers is still looking frighteningly delectable, and it's currently targeted for an August 2014 release date. Look at all that stealth and atmosphere and spindly legged madness. And you can steal conversations and make them manifest in the real world! "Rats!" someone might say upon stubbing their toe. And then I will throw a rat at them, at which point they will learn never to take rodents' name in vain again. Do you want Tangiers as badly as I want it? Probably not. But you should.