Rhode Islanders are getting a closer look at what 38 Studios produced with the $49.5 million in taxpayer-guaranteed loan money the game company received – and apparently spent – over the last two years.

A two-minute trailer for “Project Copernicus,” the massively multiplayer online game Curt Schilling’s company was developing with its 2010 loan from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, was posted Monday on the gaming website Kotaku.

“The infinite circle ever turns,” a narrator intones as the trailer begins. “All that will be has come before. The circle turns and death follows. But from death, a rebirth – and from the well of souls, a new life. Our one hope. But the circle ever turns.” 38 Studios itself offered a first glimpse of “Copernicus” just before the firm collapsed.

The trailer was leaked “by someone [who] felt the hard work of the people at 38 Studios and [its Maryland-based subsidiary] Big Huge Games that worked on the doomed project should be celebrated,” Kotaku’s Mike Fahey wrote in the blog post.

38 Studios released its first game, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” in February, but that game was developed but the Maryland studio. “Project Copernicus,” a more elaborate and more risky project, was the one backed by the EDC and being created at the company’s Providence studio.

The 38 Studios saga will move 300 miles south of Providence to a Delaware courtroom on Tuesday as a judge oversees the first meeting of the company’s creditors. WPRI.com will be there to report on what transpires.

Update: Via Joystiq, 38 Studios’ former creative director puts the trailer in context.

(screenshot: Kotaku)