The Black Glove grasps Kickstarter, channels Sander Cohen

I play all my arcade games in a suit too.

Some former employees of Irrational Games are hoping to raise $550,000 USD on Kickstarter to fund surreal, 1920s art-narrative title The Black Glove. The best way to figure out what this game is would probably be to watch the pitch video (below,) but I’ll do my best to summarise as well.

Effectively, your task is to help out the three artists in residence at a place called The Equinox. It’s a 1920s theatre that, in the developer’s words, has become “unstuck from conventional reality.” This has something to do with the artists (one film-maker, one musician, one traditional artist,) so it’s up to you to … well … alter their past lives to influence their medium, muse and message and change the present day art-work.

To do this, you employ the titular Black Glove, but to do that you must first accomplish various feats. The example given in the video is conquering an early-80s style coin-op arcade machine game involving a Minotaur (symbolism? maybe.)

So yes, it’s quite strange. Many of these former-Irrationals helped make BioShock’s Rapture and parts of BioShock Infinite; given the presentation here, I’m wondering if they had a fair bit to do with Sander Cohen’s bizarre and demented art sections. The Black Glove doesn’t seem quite as hostile as all that, but it’s still pretty unnerving.

Anyway, the usual Kickstarter pledge levels apply so you can browse those at your leisure. $20.00 USD is the point at which you’ll secure a downloadable version of the game.