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A new Wolfenstein 3D-style first-person shooter is currently in development for the SNES.
Veins of Iron was first unveiled just over two weeks ago on YouTube with a gameplay video and is being pitched as "a brand-new horror experience for the Super Nintendo", inspired by '90s shooters and horror games like Resident Evil. It is being built to run "on real hardware," and will reportedly be "powered by a custom cartridge with a modern co-processor.
From what we've been able to learn Veins of Iron is the first commercial project from the homebrew developer ModeVII, and will be getting ready to launch a Kickstarter in the near future to fund the cost of "producing physical cartridges and collector rewards," as well as further "polishing" of the game and the development of "more content."
At first glance, the whole thing looked pretty promising to us, but while visiting its Kickstarter preview, we noticed that the proposed SNES packaging there appeared to be AI-generated. So we reached out to Veins of Iron's main developer, Jan Olausson, to confirm whether AI was being used and whether this was the final design for the product.
Olausson told Time Extension via email, "About the box art, the current art is AI-generated placeholder art that will be replaced as soon as I have funding. The plan is to use the Kickstarter funding to expand art, music, and physical cartridge production."
In the same message, he assured us that all of the current in-game pixel art had been "painstakingly" made by him, and also reiterated that "the technical side of the project is very much real and actively progressing," and a lot has happened recently that hasn’t yet made it onto the features list on the website/Kickstarter. This includes:
- Textured floors and ceilings
- Scripted event system for gameplay interactions
- Lighting effects
- Screen shake effects
- Other engine improvements
He also pledged to show the project running on actual SNES hardware in the near future, noting that the recently released footage was recorded on a custom emulator: "I should also have the first assembled prototype cartridge ready soon. It will allow me to show the game running on actual SNES hardware, which I hope will increase the trust in the project."
We've sent some other follow-up questions Olausson's way, but for now, here's the official description of the game's story:
"In Veins of Iron, Europe is choking on soot, steel, and superstition until a string of ritual killings ignites something far worse than panic. You play Viktor Eisenhart, a WWI survivor, marked by wounds that never truly healed, pulled from a blood-soaked home into a city where apostate monks stalk the streets, once servants of God, now devotees of something older, hungrier, and unnamed. The dead refuse to stay buried.
"Tracking the trail leads you through plague-lit alleys, factories, manors, catacombs, and fortified ruins. Each location hides secrets, keys, and forbidden machinery that shouldn’t exist. The deeper you go, the clearer it becomes: this isn’t a simple murder spree, it’s an industrial rite meant to awaken a power sealed beneath the old world. Stop the cult, survive the horrors, and decide what you’re willing to become when iron and faith collide."
You can view more videos of the project here.