Gladmort
Image: @pixelheart_eu

Update #3 [Thu 16th May, 2024 17:30 BST]: The Kickstarter for GladMort has already passed its initial funding goal, PixelHeart has announced:

To help finance the project, we launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter on 6 May, which was validated in less than 3 hours. The game is in its final phase of development and we don't want to leave anything to chance in order to offer the best possible version. This funding campaign, which ends on 5 June, will enable us to finalise the game for Neo Geo AES/MVS, Dreamcast, Steam and Next Gen consoles, and to ensure the physical production of the Retrogaming editions proposed in the kickstarter.

By the time you receive this press release, the campaign has already exceeded €130,000, and we have just been awarded the ‘Project We Love’ badge by Kickstarter for projects they love and decide to support.

Update #2 [Tue 7th May, 2024 09:45 BST]: The Kickstarter for GladMort is finally live! If you want to back the project, you can visit its crowdfunding page here.

There are quite a few different tiers available with the cheapest way of getting the game at the moment being a digital copy for Steam priced at €12, which also comes with a digital version of the game's soundtrack. Further down the list, there are also US, PAL, and Japanese versions available for Dreamcast, as well as a bunch of options for both the Neo Geo MVS and AES.

Here's a synopsis of the story taken from the game's crowdfunding page:

"In a faraway kingdom in a land of legend, a mysterious plague of unknown origin has rapidly infected the population. Dubbed the "Red Plague", the evil nature of the phenomenon is unmistakable: the dead begin to rise from their graves, and demonic incarnations begin to appear. Within months, the dead form an evil army commanded by the Lords of Darkness. Villages and towns begin to be ravaged, the demonic legions growing with each victory.

"Attempting to resist the repeated and tireless assaults of the monster hordes, day and night, summer and winter, the last armies of exhausted men finally collapse. As the scourge continued its relentless invasion, the strength left the hearts of men and the few survivors gathered together, occasionally populating a fortified town in a remote region.

With all hope of reconquering a better world seemingly in vain, the king of these lands decided in a last hope to use an evil relic to ward off evil with evil. This artifact gives the user the power to summon a mysterious black knight: GladMort!!! Endowed with supernatural strength and questionable charisma, he is capable of summoning black magic and wielding ancestral weapons. The fate of humanity is now in the hands of our anti-hero..."

Update #1 [Fri 3rd May, 2024 12:45 BST]: PixelHeart has finally offered a bit more information on its upcoming action-platformer GladMort.

According to a recent Twitter post, a Kickstarter for the project will go live on May 6th, 2024 at 6pm CEST, with versions of the game planned for the Neo Geo, Sega Dreamcast, and Steam. A few other platforms also seemed to be in the works too, but the Neo Geo-CD doesn't currently seem to be among them despite the company's previous statements.

You can click the link here and register to be notified when the Kickstarter launches.

Original Story [Thu 25th Apr, 2024 16:30 BST]: The publisher PixelHeart seems to be gearing up to make an announcement about its upcoming Ghost 'n Goblins-esque title GladMort, putting out a video today asking for the community's help to take the Neo Geo game even further and promising more news shortly.

GladMort, in case you've never heard of it, is a promising run 'n gunner that is scheduled to come to the Neo Geo MVS, Neo Geo AES, and Neo Geo-CD in 2024, and is being developed by Chips on Steroids — who previously made Neotris.

It was originally announced back in May 2023 on Twitter and was later shown off at a couple of French gaming conventions, including Stunfest 2023 and Retro Gaming Play 2024, with some videos and images from the game surfacing at these events.

PixelHeart itself hasn't shared much about the title on social media in terms of official screenshots or trailers, but that all seems to be about to change, with the company posting a video that seems to indicate some official news is finally on the way.

The short message featured in the video reads:

"Our bad guy needs your support in 2024. Help us take the game further. May 2024. Neo Geo."

As you'll no doubt notice, GladMort isn't explicitly named in the video — likely in an attempt to add a further bit of mystery to the announcement — but one of the characters that is displayed in the background seems to be a 1:1 match the protagonist as shown in some of the public demos.

We're not entirely sure what this announcement will be, but judging from the reference to "support" and "help", we suspect it may have something to do with crowdfunding.

[source twitter.com]