It was announced for a platform that’s hard to find even in use today (emulation makes more sense), so it’s quite surprising to see this long-forgotten project released!

Until now, we thought the last game released in Europe for this platform was Pixeline i Pixieland, a Danish-language title released in 2008. For what? The Game Boy Advance, which had been replaced by the DS four years earlier (slightly less in Europe, as the dual-screen device was launched in March 2005), and was replaced by a long-delayed and forgotten action-platformer, Kien.

Development of the game began in 2002, and was originally conceived as a passion project by five developers from the Italian company AgeOfGames, who had no previous programming or coding experience. But as it was about to be released, a pothole came along and the car ended up in the ditch, but it’s not as if the obstacle came during development! In November 2003, the game was already released to the press, so Kien was ready, but the publisher canceled it before release! AgeOfGames tried to get another publisher to publish the game, but no one would sign off on the project!

In March 2024, more than twenty years (!) after the original plans, InCube8, a publisher specializing in retro games, announced that they would be releasing Kien in the near future, complete with a physical cartridge and everything… and now it’s out. One of the five original developers, Fabio Belsanti, even spoke to The Guardian. He says it’s magical that they were able to release the game on the original target platform, and it’s a dream come true. He believes that the experience can sometimes be much more intense and powerful in an old game, despite the limited graphical and technical resources.

Finally, Belsanti revealed that AgeOfGames is already working on a spiritual sequel to Kien. Hopefully it won’t take 22 years until it’s released! Duke Nukem Forever has been dethroned!

Source: GameRant, The Guardian