Developed by Day For Night Games, a team comprised of former members of Irrational Games, The Black Glove was intended to be a surrealist adventure game that cast players as the curator of the world’s oddest nightclub.
Sadly it seems like the game’s pitch was a bit obtuse for its own good – several months on from a failed Kickstarter campaign, Day for Night has finally pulled the plug on the project. A shame.
“We put together a gameplay demo that showed how you used The Black Glove artifact to explore the narrative rich environments of The Equinox and unlock its secrets,” writes the project’s creative director Joe Fielder. “We brought it to GDC and PAX East and showed it to publishers behind closed doors.We garnered some interest, but didn’t find the perfect glass slipper we were looking for and, understandably, began to lose key people to full-time work elsewhere.”
The Black Glove would have had you assemble a cast of oddball artists, poets and musicians for the Equinox Club’s comeback show, all the while avoiding the attentions of a monstrous creature that may or may not be a figment of your imagination. There was also a magic glove, and a jukebox. In the end the game’s unapologetic weirdness counted against it, but intrigued gamers need not give up hope completely.
“Design legend Paul Neurath said to us recently, “In my experience, good ideas don’t have expiration dates.”,” writes Fielder. “They’re words we’ve really taken to heart, so we intend to return to The Black Glove later when we can do it right.”
