Phoenix Online Studios, the team behind the episodic King's Quest revival known as the The Silver Lining, and Khaeon Gamestudio, an independent game developer from the Netherlands, announced that they will be joining forces in Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. Cognition will be an episodic detective game with a supernatural storyline with some thriller aspects. The storyline will have some help from well-known designer Jane Jensen, and graphic novel-style visual by comic book artist Roman Molenaar.
A campaign has been started by both studios to help fund the initial developer costs. Those inteterested in checking out (and possibly even helping!) can follow the link here for more information.
The story for Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller starts off three years ago, when FBI agent Erica Reed lost her brother to a serial killer who was never caught. During her investigation, she developed the unpredictable power of post-cognition: by touching an object, she can see its past and the events that happen on, to, or around it. While incredibly useful for her line of work, it has made her uneasy and caused problems for her professionally and personally. Now there is a new serial killer on the loose, one that leaves behind clues that suited for Agent Reed's abilities...who can it be?
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller will be a series of four episodes, a format that Phoenix Online Studios is known and comfortable to use. It was the same format that they did for the The Silver Lining. Advantageously, The Silver Lining is what drew Khaeon Gamestudio representatives to Phoenix Online Studios to help develop Cognition.
"I'm very impressed by Phoenix's work on The Silver Lining - this is a talented team who has shown incredible dedication to a fan game. Now they're a young company moving into commercial production and I'm happy to be involved. I hope to help them make their first project a success," says Jensen, creator of the acclaimed Gabriel Knight adventure game series. "Cognition is a perfect fit, too, with its supernatural storyline and graphic novel style."
Via the service Kickstarter, Phoenix Online Studios and Khaeon Gamestudio hope to raise $25,000 to fund the game's initial development. The money will go to software licenses, development resources, and other production costs. Prizes for those who help fund the project will include free downloadable copies of the finished game, signed hard copies, and rare opportunities to appear in the game, as well as name characters and participate in its development, "behind the scenes".
"Phoenix Online Studios would never have come this far if not for the dedication of our fans. They encouraged us to stick with it, they had our backs when we ran into copyright issues, and they helped us show the world that there's still a huge audience for games like The Silver Lining and Cognition," says CEO Cesar Bittar. "Now we're hoping they'll join us on this next step in our company's adventure, and in return we're looking forward to including the fans in Cognition's development process as much as we can."
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller will be released for the PC, with versions for mobile platforms under consideration. The release of the start of the four-episode series is aiming for sometime in 2012. For more information about Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, click here to visit the official website. To help with funding, click here for the Kickstarter page.
