Once upon a time, a little project called Ciellus entered TIGSource's PGC Competition. The game was made by the tag team of Annabelle Kennedy (art and music) and Terry Cavanagh (programming).

In the beginning, only artworks were shown. However, they were not simply artworks, they were AMAZING artworks, so amazing, the game's thread, with only concept arts, garnered more replies than all other game threads that came with demos, plans and whatnot. Later, when it was revealed that Ciellus would be a pixel art game, and a subsequent screenshot was shown, the crowd went wild, and expectations probably shot through the roof.

With each passing day, Ciellus grew in power, soon, it became so godly that its own creators decided that it was too much for the competition, and so began its journey in becoming a full-fledged game-in-development:

Let's have the good news first: we started this project with a very simple idea in mind - but over the last few weeks things have gone a lot better than we were expecting. So much so that we've decided to turn it into a really serious project. For the next couple of months we’re both basically going to keep working on this fulltime and see what happens :)

With that, though, we have some bad news. We’re not going to have anything for the contest deadline. We talked about releasing a short demo, but anything we released at this point would probably be a bit of a let down. We both have big plans for this game, and we just don’t think it’s ready yet - like Annabelle said way back on the third page, we want this to be magical and polished the first time everyone plays it!

So, that's a little background on the game. Without even a trailer or details on the gameplay, Ciellus could well end up being a crappy third-rate game that ends up being forgotten a week after its release. However, after seeing the artworks and screenshots, I think it could be the next big platformer (provided it's actually a platformer), the art department is already on the level of, if not better than, Cave Story, now if only the gameplay would deliver.

So far, from what's released, Ciellus looks to be an adventure/platform game featuring a little girl. Assuming it's a platformer, there will likely be multiple worlds, the concept arts released so far points to a cave level, a desert level, and a floating island level (or it could be the heroine's home). According to a comment made by Terry, the game won't have any enemies, so it's possible that it plays more like Knytt, where the gameplay focuses on exploration.

The creators mentioned in a forum post that they're thinking of participating in the 2008 IGF, meaning a demo, or at least a playable version of the game, will be available by the end of this year, and the game itself could very well be released next year (it's not like it's Starcraft 2).

This game will be one of my most intensely-watched game of 2008/2009, except more updates as they become available!