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…

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…

UPDATE (12:45 pm): Shortly after we published this story, Areal's Kickstarter campaign was suspended. A representative from Kickstarter wouldn't go into detail about the project or its suspension, and referred Kotaku to this relevant section of its FAQ.

We'll likely never get a proper STALKER game again. But that's OK! Some of the people who made STALKER - and Metro 2033 - are off to make a new game that's a lot like STALKER, it just isn't called that.