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Dark and drunken platformer, Spate, due out on Steam in March
Spate is a drunken, emotional platformer due out for PC, Mac and Linux on March 19, via Steam and the game's website. Spate has evolved since we first saw it in March: The new screenshots show off a colorful, twisted world, while previously it looked plain twisted. The story remains dark, following a father as he deals with the death of his daughter by drinking the pain away – the more he drinks, the better he runs and jumps, but the world becomes more grotesque with each sip. "The deeper into the journey he gets, the more surreal things become," Spate creator Eric Provan says. "Will he be able to ditch his drinking habit and finally face the emotions haunting him since his daughter's death? Or will he allow the drink to completely engulf him?" Spate is in beta now, available in a pre-order bundle for $25. Pre-order the final game alone for $10. Provan migrated from the film industry, starting as an artist for Walt Disney Animation Studios, Sony Pictures Animation and the Jim Henson Creature Shop. In March, he told us how these skills translate to game development, and that his favorite aspect of Spate was the rain: "I began thinking of all the movies that I love and what they have in common: Stalker, Dark City, Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China. It was rain! I began thinking of the feeling that I get when I sit at my window watching and listening to the rain come down. It's a special feeling, and it's one that I am determined to achieve with Spate."
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Spate
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, Eric Provan dissects the beauty of rain, hallucinations and mystery with Spate, coming to PC, Mac and Linux in Q3. What's your game called and what's it about?My game is called Spate. Spate is the journey of one man's descent into madness that is fueled by his addiction to absinthe, following the tragic death of his daughter. He is hired to investigate mysterious disappearances that have been occurring on an island offshore, and figures that he has nothing left to lose. The detective hopes to uncover some of the island's mysteries, but is finding it increasingly difficult to battle his own pain. As his absinthe use increases it becomes harder and harder for him to tell reality from fiction. Soon he finds he is fighting for more than just the missing people – he is fighting against the madness as well.Out of all the drinks someone can be addicted to, why absinthe?Truthfully, absinthe began as an excuse for me to make weird stuff. I love abstract art, and needed a logical reason to include it in the game. Today it is mostly debunked, but for hundreds of years it had been thought that absinthe caused hallucinations. This works for the steampunk theme, the gameplay, the story and the visuals.%Gallery-181301%
