CloudHead Games’ project for their indie adventure The Gallery: Six Elements has a funding deadline of 17 April 2013 on the Kickstarter website. At the time of writing, it has received $17,951 of its $65,000 target from 438 backers across the world and from what we’ve seen so far, this number can only keep on getting higher.

Here at 1001-Up.com, we’ve been following The Gallery: Six Elements for the past week and have even become backers ourselves. In their promotional video, CloudHead Games’ Creative Director Denny Unger tempts by saying that the game is influenced by Myst (review coming soon) – one of our favourite games – with a heavy emphasis on environmental immersion, puzzle-solving and emotional depth. So how could we stop ourselves from getting involved?

Although the premise is somewhat different, the developer’s efforts so far are reminiscent of Cyan’s classic adventure and try to capture the same sense of place and atmosphere. Players take on the role of an urban explorer who stumbles across a path towards an ancient network of tunnels while spelunking in a modern day sewer system. These lead to the Gallery, which contains six ancient paintings within individual display chambers, and players must physically enter each painted world to find sacred keys in order to escape. But beware – you aren’t alone.

Each painting represents a core element of life – Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Love and Death – and their individual realities have their own unique rules. This is very similar to Myst’s ‘Ages’ – Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical and Channelwood – and we’re looking forwarding to seeing how these themes influence the setting and puzzles contained within each world.

What makes The Gallery: Six Elements different is the fact that it’s being designed for the Oculus Rift from the ground up to take full advantage of the unique opportunities that virtual reality can provide. CloudHead Games was an early contributor to Oculus’ Kickstarter project and invested in two developer kits with the intention of building a game specifically for the device. Though it will be perfectly playable with a standard mouse and keyboard, one of the developer’s goals is to include support for motion controllers such as the Razer Hydra, to further enhance players’ immersion within their world.

We absolutely cannot wait to get our hands on the game but it looks like we’re going to have to wait another twelve months for the full version. However, early access to beta content will be available in August 2013 so expect a further article later this year. Check out CloudHead Games’ project on Kickstarter and be sure to vote for The Gallery: Six Elements on Steam Greenlight – it’s definitely worth a view.