Battle Chasers: Nightwar Announced By Joe Madureira's Airship Syndicate

Joe Madureira’s cult comic Battle Chasers is returning, but its story won’t be told on page. [...]

(Photo: Airship Syndicate)

Joe Madureira's cult comic Battle Chasers is returning, but its story won't be told on page. Instead, Airship Syndicate, the independent game studio Madureira created with his brother Steve and former Vigil partner Ryan Stefanelli, is working on a new JRPG called Battle Chasers: Nightwar.

Madureria's original Battle Chasers comic ended notoriously on a cliffhanger, one that he intended to resolve before life took him in a different direction and he ended up leaving comics for the games industry instead.

"At that time, I was heavily into games and transitioned into the game industry, so the book was never finished," Madureira says. "It's funny because, over the years, I thought people would just lose interest in it, but it's the single most asked about project of my life's work."

Unfortunately, Madureira's games career took a downturn when Vigil, the company he and Stefanelli helped co-found, closed down after releasing Darksiders 2. Madureira briefly returned to comics, working on Marvel's Inhuman, but he and Stefanelli reconnected and decided to give gaming another shot, this time with a much smaller company.

Now, 15 years after the release of Battle Chasers #9, the five-man team at Airship Syndicate is hard at work on continuing the series' story through Nightwar. The game is currently in the early stages of development, but Airship Syndicate is getting ready to show it to the public via the launch of a Kickstarter campaign intended to fund the remainder of the game's development.

The game looks like it will blend SNES JRPG mechanics with Madureira's signature art style, an isometric world that mixes 2D and 3D art assets, and some more modern trapping. If you're interested, check out Polygon's cover feature, which covers both Nightwar's development as well as Madureira's experiences in the game industry, and keep an eye out for the Battle Chasers: Nightwar Kickstarter launch.

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