Phosphor Games, a collective of game creators with ties to Midway Games, has revealed its latest announced project, The Dark Meadow. It's an ambitious FPS that seeks to blend long-range projectile combat with Infinity Blade-inspired [$5.99] melee combat. And as its name conjures, it's set in a fantastical and twisted storybook world. The goal of the project is to do more than entertain you � it wants to scare you, too.

Like I said, it's an ambitious game. We don't see many handheld or tablet games fiddling with the horror genre, no less the FPS one. Aside from a Kinect mini-games project, this studio is also behind the wheel of an unfunded open-world action game called Awakened, which is just as ambitious as The Dark Meadow.

Inspiration was a big theme in the exclusive Pocket Gamer interview that revealed this project. Phosphor notes that the story and world resembles, to some extent, del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, while Infinity Blade and even Fruit Ninja [$.99 / HD] inspired the sword-based melee combat. A duo of id Software titles were name-dropped for the long-range stuff, as well as Time Crisis, which is a notable duck-and-cover arcade game that you play with a plastic gun and a pocket full of quarters.

For the better, Phosphor notes that organic, gesture-based controls seem to work best for these two platforms, so it'll use them in The Dark Meadow. That gives us a fair bit of confidence in the project � natural, uncluttered games tend to be the better ones. But, of course, it's wise to remain cautious. Big games like this one always sound eye-poppingly amazing on paper. We'll keep an eye out for this as it rolls to release.

[Via Pocket Gamer]