Have you ever wondered what could happen if time travel was a reality? Have you ever thought about the possibility of going back in time to rewrite history for the better? This fall, developer 8monkey Labs and publisher Phantom EFX will be releasing an innovative first person shooter: Darkest of Days.

The game will offer the opportunity for players to experience some of the most dramatic events in human history such as The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest conflict of the Civil War, and both World War I and II, and tasked to save certain key individuals who were never meant to become involved in these truly monstrous events and thereby change human history for the better.


Although this is a FPS, strategy will come into play as well—the approach to the battles and situations is important, as is the attention paid to the key individuals and their survival. Special features will include the ability to cheat time and (in certain instances) bring your own, more sophisticated future weaponry with you into the past. How about Rocket launchers at Gettysburg, anyone? Of course, we can’t have too many “eddies” in the space-time continuum, so no getting carried away… Well, maybe just a little.

8monkey Labs have also developed a new game engine to drive the battles in Darkest of Days: they have titled it Marmoset. The engine was developed for the PC, but was recently ported to the Xbox 360. Marmoset was also designed to help the game support a large number of active characters during gaming with smooth game play. Seeing it first hand on the last day of E3, I saw a flood of enemies on the screen alongside friendly AI, all with a very realistic feel.

I have to admit, I have always want to see how things would have changed if some time shift anomaly had sucked today’s military technology into past battles. I guess being a time agent to save key people from some of the biggest human tragedies in human history is a good start to that fantasy.


When the demo was over, it left me wonder: are they really going to pull it off? We never saw a game like this but most of us know that small companies are always the first to introduce something great to the gaming industry. Still, I can’t wait to see the final build. Sadly, there was no release date confirmed (PhantomEFX looks at a fall 2009 window) but I will keep my eyes open… and so do you!