Elland: The Crystal Wars To Be Resurrected On Kickstarter
There were a lot of games planned for the Game Boy Advance that never made it, and one of the more interesting and ambitious plans was for a first-person flying shooter game based around the Dune license. The developer, Soft Brigade, eventually lost the license and renamed the game “Elland: The Crystal Wars,” but the project did not see completion before the GBA’s shelf life expired.
But that’s not the end: the game could be completed after all. The recent release of a new Dune movie seemed like the right time to look into it. John Roo of Retro Room Games has picked up the rights and source code, and plans to create a finished version…but you know where this is going. He needs your help to do that.
“Development of the game started in 2001, but in summer 2002 the project was cancelled,” explains Roo. “We obtained the rights to bring it back and finally give it the official physical release it deserves!”
There are 23 missions in the game, ranging from simple shooting to escort missions to taking down specific targets like enemy buildings. You can collect power-ups on the planet’s desert surface to increase your ship’s firepower, but they’ll be difficult to find. In some cases the enemies will take the power-up from you, and you’ll have to shoot them down to get it.
Elland: The Crystal Wars is one of those rare attempts to create a fully 3D environment on the GBA, which a few studios managed to pull off, but not all. We’ll have more information when the Kickstarter launches on November 16.
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