Steampunk Gospel – Reaching Teen Gamers With Scriptural Truth

Online adventure game The Aetherlight retells the epic story of scripture in an exciting steampunk world filled with quests, puzzles, crafting and more

As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, it’s important to share the gospel in the language and context of each culture. (See 1 Corinthians 9:20-22) For today’s kids, that means sharing the timeless truths of Scripture in a context that makes sense to a generation that grew up on tablets, video games, and digital media.

To meet that challenge, Scarlet City Studios has launched an online role-playing adventure game for tweens, The Aetherlight: Chronicles of the Resistance. The game retells the epic story of Scripture in an exciting steampunk world filled with quests, puzzles, crafting and more.

The Aetherlight: Chronicles of the Resistance is a multiplayer point-and-click adventure game for preteens. Set in a mysterious steampunk-flavored land, the player arrives on a beach and is offered the chance to help a group of friends aid a deposed ruler–known as the Great Engineer–regain his rightful place on the throne. In this land where fog pervades everything, distorting and perverting what is good, the player becomes part of a resistance to drive back the fog and the armies of a usurper king.

The “World Builder” of The Aetherlight is Tim Cleary, a former youth pastor who is passionate about reaching youth with biblical truth in a way that draws them into God’s story.

“The Aetherlight: Chronicles of the Resistance was our way of connecting young people with the story of God and their parents to that journey as well,” Cleary says. “We set about creating a game, in a fantastical steampunk world that would allow young people to become immersed in a parallel telling of the biblical narrative. It would allow them not only to connect with the biblical narrative but also to ‘feel’ the story within it.”

“Great gaming is as much about great storytelling as it is about the gameplay itself,” says Scarlet City Studios CEO Carl Becker. “We have taken the greatest story ever told—the story of the God of the Bible and His relationship with humanity—and built an allegorical world that is truly epic. Think Chronicles Of Narnia, or Ben Hur, or even Dave and the Giant Pickle! Our hope is that this brand-new expression of the biblical narrative will help them to see their own world, and their part in it, through new lenses—with greater hope and a richer sense of meaning.”

The Aetherlight has been endorsed by the American Bible Society as an innovative and authentic expression of the biblical narrative. “There is a battle for the hearts and minds of young people. That’s why I’m excited about The Aetherlight,” says American Bible Society president and CEO Roy Peterson. “Through this gaming experience, we have a mechanism to get young people to engage with scripture.”

Lukas Hielscher of Christian Gamer calls The Aetherlight a “perfect combination between entertainment and teaching preteens about the fundamentals of the scriptures. This game is an excellent choice for Christian gamers!”

Gabriela Martinez of Christian and Missionary Alliance Kids says The Aetherlight provides a bridge to the Bible for the digital generation. “God wants to meet kids where they are. The Aetherlight invites them to plunge deeper into God’s story. With so many things vying for our children’s attention, The Aetherlight provides a strategy to point them to Jesus and to the relevance of His Story in today’s world.”

Coming this summer will be the new companion Bible, the first Bible for young gamers.

The one-of-a-kind Bible, themed around the new action-adventure game, will be a resource for players and help families build upon the bridge between the game’s allegory and the words of Scripture.

The Aetherlight: Chronicles of the Resistance is available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android, and can be downloaded at: https://theaetherlight.com