American McGee reveals Grimm

American Mcgee, who earned acclaim as a level designer for Quake and Doom at id Software, has announced via his blog that he working on a new game to be released through GameTap.

American Mcgee has also become famous for his dark, twisted takes on classical stories and transforming them into computer games such as Alice, a hugely creative re-telling of the Alice in Wonderland stories by Lewis Carroll. The new game, which is to be developed at Spicy Horse Studios (Ed - local delicacy?), will be no different.

Titled Grimm, the game will be a macabre version of the Brothers Grimm fairy stories and will be designed by himself and R.J. Berg, who also worked on Alice.

Grimm won't be seeing a retail release any time soon though and is planned to be a massive 24 episode epic that will be available exclusively via the subscription-based GameTap service where players can download games from.

With 24 episodes in the planning stages, it's easily the most ambitious episodic title we've seen, especially when other episodic games like Half-Life Episode 2 have suffered repeated delays, or been outright cancelled like the short-lived Sin Episodes. The game won't be a complex first person shooter though, but a series of action/adventure games which presumably cover one fairy tale per episode.

Of course, episodic games aren't always doomed to fail and the recent Sam and Max titles which have been produced by Telltale Games have been met with critical acclaim and support in return for keeping to regular release dates. The Sam and Max games have also been released via GameTap, so the licensing of Grimm may mean that GameTap sees a future in the episodic format despite the failures of other companies

So, can episodic gaming work or is it all doomed to suffer delay after delay? Are episodic games any better, or do you prefer a solid, larger game arriving after years of wait? Don't look at us for the answer, (Ed - that'll be arriving as episodic content in a few days? Joke!) so dive into the forums!