''Blackroom'' is a cancelled

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

game from the independent studio Night Work Games, created by former

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

developers

John Romero Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American video game developer. He co-founded id Software and designed their early games, including ''Wolfenstein 3D'' (1992), ''Doom (1993 video game), Doom'' (1993), ''Doom II'' (1994), ''Hexen ...

and

Adrian Carmack Adrian Carmack (born May 5, 1969) is an American video game artist and one of four co-founders of id Software, along with Tom Hall, John Romero, and John Carmack (no relation). The founders met while working at Softdisks ''Gamer's Edge'' divi ...

. It was planned to be crowdfunded on the

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

platform, but the crowdfunding campaign was cancelled in April 2016. The game was set to launch during the winter quarter of 2018. In 2023, it was confirmed to be cancelled.

Gameplay

The game was set to be a

in the same vein as classic shooters that Romero and Carmack first formulated in their early game development years. It was described as "a return to fast, violent and masterful play on the PC." The game was also to feature various multiplayer modes along with its single player campaign, including co-operative play, deathmatch, and more. The controls were described as "fast, skillful movement with rocket jumping, strafe jumping and circle strafing," similar to the controls featured in a previous id Software title, '' Quake''.

Plot

The game was set to take place in an

alternate world A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, world, or dimension, is a plot device in fiction which uses the notion of a hypothetical universe co-existing with another, typically to enable alternative narrative possibilities. The sum ...

. HOXAR, a company that specializes in virtual and alternate reality technology, has created the ''HoloSims'', a device that simulates another world to its

user Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...

. However, something has gone awry with the system, and its users are beginning to see their simulations being warped and changed with terrifying results. The player plays as Dr. Santiago Sonora, a Chief Engineer at HOXAR. After an encounter with the HoloSims device, Sonora begins to have a difficult time separating simulation from reality. Armed with the HOXAR device Boxel and their wits, it is up to Sonora to defeat the system.

Development

Romero's first intention to create a new

goes back to 2012, when he mentioned the idea on Twitter. Going forward, during 2014, Romero again certified he was creating a new FPS, and said "I haven't made a shooter since 2000 ''

Daikatana ''Daikatana'' is a first-person shooter game developed by Ion Storm. It was published by Eidos Interactive for Windows and Kemco for Nintendo 64. Players control a swordsmaster who travels through various time periods using the eponymous Daikat ...

''. So I'm basically starting to work on another one". In January 2016, few months before Kickstarter campaign, John Romero said about the game "I don't want to talk about it, because it's a really cool idea, an original idea. I've never seen anything like that before". Romero announced the game's title as ''Blackroom'', on April 25, 2016, and started a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

campaign with an aim of $700,000 to be reached in 32 days. The project features

lead designer Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, war games, or simulation game ...

and

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

Dokken Dokken is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1978. It split up in 1989 and reformed four years later. The band has had several hit singles which charted on the Billboard Hot 100, such as " Alone Again", " In My Dreams", and ...

's George Lynch as composer; about ''Blackroom'', Romero said "We're developing exactly the type of game we think a lot of shooter fans want. It's the type of shooter we're known for, and the type of game we love to play ourselves. It's a skillful shooter, from movement to weapon and map mastery". On April 29, 2016, John Romero cancelled ''Blackroom''s Kickstarter campaign, which stopped at over $131,000, pausing it to develop a ''Blackroom'' demo and planning to show that and reopen the campaign in the future. In an interview on November 23, 2019, Romero claimed he was still working on ''Blackroom''. As of September 2020, there had been no new public release. In Romero’s 2023 autobiography, “Doom Guy: Life in First Person”, he confirmed that while a demo existed and was shown to publishers, the game was cancelled.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://web.archive.org/web/20190401072648/http://www.blackroomgame.com/ (archived)
Developer website
(archived) 2018 video games Cancelled macOS games Cancelled Windows games First-person shooters First-person shooter multiplayer online games Kickstarter-funded video games Video games developed in Ireland Romero Games games Science fantasy video games Unreal Engine 4 games Windows games MacOS games