I totally missed reporting on this rather big news from Kevin Fishburne back when it was current (which was at the end of June — for shame!), so here it is now: development on Sanctimonia — Kevin’s Ultima-inspired, PvE MMORPG for Linux — is on hold for the time being.

But there’s a good reason for that:

I’ve decided in the interest of staying fresh, creative, sane, and to test the viability of distributing Sanctimonia as a Linux-exclusive title through Steam, to start and complete a side project…a new game.

Before abandoning me in droves and cursing the day you heard the name Sanctimonia, know this: Sanctimonia will continue to be actively developed and should be feature complete and ready for public testing by the end of the year. Work on Sanctimonia continues with few new systems to implement, leaving the expansion and polish of existing systems, asset creation, optimization and player testing. I can say with confidence that if a day comes when I stop working on Sanctimonia, you have my permission to hunt me down and shoot me where I stand: It will be finished.

INTRODUCING SYLPH: PROJECT MIYAJI

My new project, prototyped and playable in less than eight hours, is a tribute to the late Takeshi Miyaji of Game Arts and G-Mode and is a true spiritual successor to the original 1986 title Silpheed for the PC-8801. Musical inspiration is taken from the MS-DOS port’s Roland MT-32 score as composed by Mecano Associates and arranged by Mark Seibert. In the event you’re not familiar with this iconic game, it is a science fiction shoot’em up that treated the genre with a level of respect, sophistication and technical supremacy unseen at the time.

It is with great reverence and care that I embark on a brief journey to capture the spirit of this game in Sylph: Project Miyaji, which if technically possible I plan to release on Steam for Linux within the next few months.

Sylph: Project Miyaji — or simply Sylph — takes the form of a 3D SHMUP. As can be seen above, the gameplay looks engaging, and there’s some of that No Man’s Sky goodness to be found in the video as the player-controlled fighter leaves the planet’s atmosphere.

No, Sylph doesn’t have a thing to do with Ultima; I won’t be creating a project entry for it here. But, as Kevin notes, it will make for an interesting test of the viability of releasing a Linux-exclusive title via Steam. If successful in that venture, it could bode well for Sanctimonia. And having a successful game on Steam might also furnish Kevin with a bit of an additional revenue stream (we can hope!)…something that would also assist, rather materially, the development and completion of Sanctimonia.