Remember Areal, that suspicious Kickstarter project made by a studio claiming to be in an "information war" with Russia after receiving a signed letter from Vladimir Putin? It disappeared after its Kickstarter campaign was suspended. Areal is still gone, but its creator is back with something even more strange.

If you've been shying away from backing Kickstarters for the past few weeks, I don't blame you. Between the half-a-million-dollar Yogventures fiasco and Areal's increasingly confusing saga, I've been hesitant to commit coins to my daily coffee without concrete proof I'll get a finished product. That said, Kickstarter still regularly hosts great stuff. Case in point: Jenny LeClue's gorgeous coming-of-age mystery.

With barely two days left in its controversial Kickstarter campaign to bring "a definitive spiritual successor to the cult hit S.T.A.L.K.E.R." into the world, Areal developer West Games had the rug pulled out from underneath it yesterday when its project was suddenly suspended. But that hasn't stopped the Ukrainian developer from trying to bring its embattled shooter into existence.

STALKERwas the kind of gloomy and artful first-person shooter that left gamers wanting more. So when a Kickstarter campaign launched late last month claiming that a team of former STALKER developers were a making "a definitive spiritual successor," gamers were intrigued.