Implacable as ever, the adventure genre takes another small step this week, with the announcement of a new game called Prominence. It's still too early to tell whether it's a step forward, backward, or plain sideways, but from the little we know so far, Prominence will be a point-and-click adventure played from a first-person perspective, and placed in a science-fiction setting. The game's developer is an American studio called Digital Media Workshop, and as far as we can tell, this seems to be their first game project.

The action will be set within a multi-level, high-tech (and pre-rendered) facility in a futuristic universe. From what the official website tells us, we can expect "challenging puzzles and an enthralling story", that will quickly turn into a mystery revealed through physical clues, audio recordings, data archives, and a damaged central computer system in need of repairs. In other words, yet another lifeless game environment... or is it?

Maybe not so lifeless, since the game promises to feature an ensemble of character voices supplied by professional actors. Sound wise, the devs also plan to take advantage of their experience in producing music (which they have been doing for over a decade), in order to bring the world of Prominence to life through powerful environmental soundscapes and a cinematic score.

More interesting, however, is that the story will be branching into two very different paths at one point during the game, based on the player's choice. "Each path", they say, "will lead not only to a different ending, but will have different obstacles to overcome and unique environments to explore". Some of the puzzles will also have more than one solution, so this might just turn out to be one of those rare adventure games that you will feel like playing all over again. That is, assuming it will keep you hooked longed enough to finish it at least once.

Digital Media Workshop only has a couple of artworks to show for at this time, but it plans to have the final version of Prominence ready for release in 2008.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)