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Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a frankly brilliant horror game that was originally released on the GameCube in 2002, but which can now also be played on the Wii. It centers around a young heroine named Alexandra Roivas, who is called to Rhode Island by the police after her grandfather is violently murdered in his library. Alex refuses to leave her grandfather's mansion until she gets some answers as to how he died, and as she explores the old homestead she finds a book called the Tome of Eternal Darkness that allows her to relive the memories of its past owners, and to discover a history rife with magic and monsters.

Now, over a decade after the release of the original game and in the wake of a failed sequel that never made it past the concept art stage due to video game studio Silicon Knights' rapid decline, the creators are planning a spiritual successor called Shadow of the Eternals. Not only that, but they've already debuted a teaser trailer for it over at IGN, which you can view above.

The first game largely helped to popularize the concept of a 'sanity meter' in video games, a gameplay element that was later famously exploited in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and did so in a number of very clever ways that were designed to genuinely mess with the player's head. It was also one of the few games in the survival horror genre to have a genuinely decent combat system for fighting off monsters.

The teaser for Shadow of the Eternals shows that the game will have a medieval setting (though whether this will be the case for the entire game, or whether the plot will take place over multiple time periods, isn't clear yet) with a young male protagonist and two central female characters. Though the information that's currently available suggests that this is a spiritual successor as opposed to a direct sequel, one of the characters in the trailer bears a passing resemblance to Alex Roivas, and there's a shot of a book that could be the Tome of Eternal Darkness or a similar plot device.

Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem - Poe quote

The new studio, Precursor Games, boasts the involvement of the original Eternal Darkness creators, and IGN's Rich George has confirmed the involvement of Denis Dyack via Twitter, but it's not yet known which other Silicon Knights employees are helping to develop the game.

Precursor Games haven't said exactly how far along the game is in development (the teaser appears to be a mix of gameplay and pre-rendered footage), but they will publish a longer reveal on May 6, which is also when their crowd-funding campaign for the game will kick off. There is already an official website, which currently simply displays a countdown, along with a Facebook page, Twitter account and Youtube account for the game.

Let us know what you think of this teaser, and whether you'd be willing to donate money to an Eternal Darkness sequel, in the comments.

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Source: IGN (via CVG)