DigitalBattle.com

Independent filmmakers are getting recognition as more than just broke, overly ambitious film students; independent music has spawned whole new styles and movements and independent game studios are showing that they can do more than just Wiiware and downloadable games. Spiders, a studio founded by the creators of Silverfall and Earth Awakening has released the first round of screenshots and footage for an action RPG for consoles simply titled Mars.

The press release states “it blends the sensation of power and rhythmic aerial battle of beat’em alls with the progression, immersion and storyline of RPG’s in a dark and dreamlike post apocalyptic universe.” It’s certainly dark in the semi-ruined building the first video shows the protagonist running around in. So far nothing seems terribly dreamlike except for the creatures, which are obviously intended to look like creatures from a nightmare but are more likely to put you to sleep than keep you up at night jumping at every shadow.

The game will feature two protagonists, an elite soldier with a ‘dark past’ (who needs to learn the protective value of torso garments) and a technomancer. They say that each character will have their own gameplay due to differing backgrounds, skills and features but presumably they will still be going through the same overall storyline with possible exceptions of a few character specific levels or quests. The intentions for the game sound good, but the screenshots are a bit unimpressive, with the creatures drawing their stylistic inspiration mostly from Clive Barker and HR Giger. The atmosphere overall hopes to evoke feelings of dark dreariness but simply looks dark and red. The game is set to release in 2010 however, so there’s plenty of time for them to polish up the title before it launches on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.