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Shardlight, the upcoming post-apoc point-and-clicker that was announced last fall, will be out on March 8. Developer Wadjet Eye Games revealed the date today, along with a new trailer confirming that, 20 years after the world was shattered by war, it's still a miserable place. The wealthy are doing alright, but the teeming masses face a day-to-day struggle for survival amid squalor and disease.
Wadjet Eye specializes in this kind of retro-flavored adventure, as a developer and a publisher, and it has a well-earned reputation for putting out good stuff: Gemini Rue, Primordia (which I liked a lot more than our reviewer), Resonance, A Golden Wake, and most recently, Technobabylon. So even though the Shardlight world isn't necessarily the most original thing ever, my hopes for it are fairly high. And original or not, I do dig the setting. I don't know what it is about blasted, post-war hellscapes that I find so compelling, but I sure do like 'em.
(For videogames, that is. I probably wouldn't find them quite so enjoyable if I actually had to live in one.)
The Steam page has the system requirements, and the short version is that, yes, you can run it. However, for the sake of thoroughness, I will post them here as well—just the recommended spec, though, since the minimum is virtually identical.
- OS: Windows ME or higher
- Processor: Pentium or higher
- Memory: 64 MB RAM
- Graphics: 640x400, 32-bit colour: 700 Mhz system minimum
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Sound Card: All DirectX-compatible sound cards
There's no price at this point, but Technobabylon, which came out last summer, sells for $15/ 11, so I'd expect something not too far off that mark. Wadjet Eye has also released free demos for its last couple of games, so maybe we'll get one for Shardlight, too. And now, enjoy some fresh screens!
Update: Wadjet Eye has confirmed that a free Shardlight demo will be released roughly a week ahead of the game's launch.