Project Giana is the grandchild of The Great Giana Sisters, a Super Mario Bros clone made by the now-deceased founder of our company in the eighties. Of course, Nintendo didn’t like that, and the sisters got pulled off the shelves. That’s ancient history now, and, in an ironic twist, a legit Giana game was released for the DS in 2009. That was a pretty awesome move from Nintendo, and we’re grateful!

Giana is a girl of polar opposites, trapped in a fractured dream of rainbows and shadows. Harkening back to the 80’s Great Giana Sisters, Project Giana pulls you into a phantasmagorical adventure of contrasting themes underscored with music produced by Chris Hülsbeck and Machinae Supremacy – classic Giana tunes flow into metal riffs and back again as you switch between dream and nightmare.

Giana’s dual nature is a reflection of the game world. You can warp her dreams at the push of a button, causing Giana herself to shift accordingly. Both the world and Giana will behave differently depending on whether you are in the dream or nightmare, allowing you to master each level with transformative tricks.

So… why does this new project exist? For Giana’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Black Forest Games wanted to do something of our own, with full creative control and no “dumbing down”. Publishers tend to avoid titles they can’t groom for risk and profit, which is fair enough for a business, so BFG had to finance Giana ourselves.

The “Project” part is a placeholder – the final title will be determined during the final stage of Black Forest Games' kickstarter, and will take your feedback into account. The German developer is thrilled with the start of its campaign for Project Giana on Kickstarter. Only three days into the campaign, the game has already achieved 15% of its needed funding.

“The initial phase of our campaign went beyond our expectations”, says Adrian Goersch, Managing Director of Black Forest Games. “We are especially happy that so many international fans support our endeavor to breathe new life into the Giana brand for its 25th anniversary.”

“How do you revive a 25 year old classic?” Jean-Marc Haessig, the Creative Director of Black Forest Games explains: “I asked myself what the core elements of The Great Giana Sisters were. How could we bring it to the next level? And not just the graphics, but also music and game play, all while staying true to the spirit of the game? When I asked those questions aloud, our team went nuts about the concept. We went back and forth with ideas, how to implement them and wondered if a complete transformation of the game – graphics, music, heroine with all the morphing involved – in real time, at any time – would be technologically feasible. In the end, we had our first playable level and realized that it wouldn’t be just feasible, but also a blast to play. And that’s when Project Giana was born.”

“Kickstarter was chosen for its reach, level of awareness and being known for a projects community that is open towards games. $150,000 will be the minimum we need to avoid cutting content. At $250,000, the developers will be able to push the game to the next level with even more features, bosses and levels”, says Andreas Speer, Managing Director of Black Forest Games.

The devs stuck to the classic core gameplay, but also expanded it with something new. Don’t worry – it’s not a random idea out of the blue, but builds on the central theme of our heroine transforming from “cutie” to “punky” within a dream world. You can now switch between both forms at will – any time, anywhere, and each form has its own abilities.

But that’s only half of the story… whenever you transform, you’re actually warping the entire dream world! Cute Giana likes it spooky, thank you very much, and can lightly twirl over obstacles and enemies as long as the dream is sufficiently morbid. Flip to her candyland nightmare, and angry Punk Giana takes over, smashing anything fluffy that dares bar her way. The dream and nightmare worlds look, sound and behave differently, and morph between each other in real time, enabling all kinds of tricky maneuvers and bonus puzzly bits for secret areas.

The composer of the original Giana music, Chris Hülsbeck, has joined us for Project Giana. He has been co-producing a special two-layered mirroring soundtrack together with the chiptune-centric metal band Machinae Supremacy. Chris Hülsbeck’s classic soundtrack seamlessly transitions to Machinae Supremacy’s Giana homage and back again as you switch between dream and nightmare.