Developers hope to 'stir a hunger for god's word' with bible game

Phoenix Interactive Studios has a clear goal: to make a game that is first and foremost about accurately telling biblical stories.

The Kickstarter campaign for Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham went live yesterday and runs until Feb. 6. Phoenix has a funding goal of $100,000 in order to make its game a reality for Windows and Mac.

The studio calls Bible Chronicles a role-playing adventure, with studio co-founder Martin Bertram describing it as “kind of like a single-player World of Warcraft in terms of gameplay experience.” The Kickstarter page claims it will have an open world with many ancient locales, hundreds of characters, and hours of subplots.

The developers’ inspiration is to deliver a video game experience that faithfully represents specific stories from the Book of Genesis, centered on Abraham’s journey. Players will witness events such as Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt, and they will be able to participate in action-filled battles such as the War of Kings as well as smaller skirmishes.

This would help studio cofounders Richard Gaeta and Bertram to achieve their main goal to “get a copy … into every Christian home that’s out there.” They are both practicing Christians and hope that Bible Chronicles “will stir a hunger for god’s word in everyone” who plays it.

When asked which aspect of Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham he was most excited about, Gaeta said it is “the fact that we’re designing this game to be as biblically accurate as possible, and that it’s the first of its kind,” where players will follow “the footsteps … of the journey of Abraham.”

The team was so serious about sticking to the source material that they hired an advisory board of local pastors and ministers to ensure that Bible Chronicles remained “accurate, even from a theologian’s perspective,” according to Gaeta. Bertram added that they’re also excited to be making “a game that is on par with mainstream studio quality.”

Phoenix Interactive Studios is the development branch of a technology consulting firm which Gaeta and Bertram founded 10 years ago, and they have been funding Bible Chronicles themselves since they began development about a year ago. They were seeking a financial investor before they discovered Kickstarter and observed that other companies like them had found great success using the crowd-funding platform. Kickstarter seemed like a good fit for them even while they continue to pursue other investment options.

They claim to have a lot of the groundwork for the game done, but they say they need more staff and resources to replicate the game’s assets to a larger scale and achieve the desired quality level before the holiday season.

The first two stretch goals of the campaign are aimed at expanding the game’s potential audience. If they reach $250,000, Gaeta and Bertram want to add Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 versions. At $300,000, they plan to add Spanish. Gaeta said that they would love to market the game internationally, to “areas like Central and South America, with a vision and a hope that we can get it out there to the whole world.”

The final stretch goal of $450,000 would add expanded soundtrack and cinematic content as well as new cities, to the game.

Phoenix Interactive has a target U.S. release date of Nov. 21.