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It’s time again for the weekly look into gaming Kickstarter campaigns, picking out a few that look interesting.
Our catch-up first with the previously covered Kickstarters brings an awful lot of good news this week. Most of the good news consists of campaigns that haven’t yet concluded but have either bypassed their targets or are pretty near reaching it. One campaign has also concluded successfully, and that one is Hellpoint. The other campaigns doing well are OtterBash!, Ashes of Creation, Forsaken Castle and Q-YO BLASTER.
However, there is one bit of bad news and that is a campaign that has finished having failed. This is The Unique Adventure, and there are no updates to talk about so it’s unsure whether this will be a continued project.
First we have a project that’s received a lot of media coverage already.
Project Rap-Rabbit is a game from the creators of PaRappa The Rapper and Gitaroo Man, coming together for a new rhythm-action adventure with story and more. The title is coming to PC and Playstation 4, and apparently had taken inspiration from the epic Rap Battles of History Youtube series to bring rap-inspired battle face-offs to the game. It has a lot of Japanese lore elements in there too, and ‘Project Rap-Rabbit’ will not be the final title of the game.
Project Rap-Rabbit has a £855,000 goal of which it has made £55,349 so far, with 35 more days to go.
spaceBOUND aims to add some twists to the puzzle-platformer genre. The game is a co-operative title, and because it’s set in space zero-gravity plays a part in the game. Two players play as astronauts bound together by a tether and having to work together to solve puzzles and explore the asteroid they are on. The co-op is both local and a direct connect online co-op so you can play with your friends all over the world.
spaceBOUND has a target of $1,000. It has 29 days to go, and has made $858.
Next up we have a point and click game with quite a title.
The End Is Nahual is described in the campaign’s sub-header as “a point & click game, full of minigames, action, bad puns and Mighty Pianos with existential problems.” So just your regular game then. You play as a character Jacob, described as the ‘antagonist’ as well as the ‘antagonist of the antagonist, Sammael’. During the game you will meet up with a bunch of characters who can help or hinder you, and play through mini-games.
The End Is Nahual has 26 days to go, and has made MX$ 43,040 of its MX$ 650,000 goal.
A game focused on ambiance, the game is full of exploration and fighting as gameplay mechanics. Another point-and-click, you led your character through this dark and somewhat unholy building, exploring the rooms and finding items to help you make your way through it… and maybe even discovering secrets along the way. According the the campaign page the game is “centred on its atmosphere, visual narration and mystery.”
The Salt Fortress has made €249 of its €5,000 goal and has 29 days to go.
From the moment you start up Little Nightmares, you will be uneasy. The haunting visuals of it’s world will pull you in, the background noises The Maw will put you on edge and the sense of scale will keep you feeling off balance. There is a lot to be said for gameplay over story telling, and Little Nightmares embraces this idea wholeheartedly, even if it does stumble occasionally.
You play as Six, a little girl that must escape The Maw, a strange underwater resort filled with twisted inhabitants and nightmarish locations. You are never told that you must escape, or even why but the game communicates the message clearly without traditional story telling devices. There is no explicitly delivered narrative in Little Nightmares, instead you are left to intuit vague narrative snippits from locations, events and individuals that you encounter. Who is Six? What is happening in the Maw? These questions will follow you through the somewhat brief campaign, and you will probably be left with even more questions after the game’s thought provoking ending.
In terms of gameplay, Little Nightmares is a puzzle platformer at heart. Indeed, many of it’s ideas are nothing new. Instead, it’s the visual style and the ever shifting sense of scale in the game that make it special. Early on you will encounter the Janitor, a twisted creature with tiny legs but incredibly long arms who hunts you via sound and smell. Encounters with him take on a stealth element as you carefully creep around, then toss a cymbal banging toy bear to distract him as you make a mad dash for safety. Later on, you will have to run for your life in escape platforming sequences as you try to get away from The Twins – hideous chefs who wear the skin of other people’s faces as masks.
The macabre, unsettling setting of Little Nightmares is on of it’s strongest points, and I was constantly impressed at how well it ran. I rarely ever experienced any slowdown or graphical issues. The sound design is truly wonderful, with bangs and clanks from the background activities of The Maw keeping you always uneasy. The grunts and squeals that pass for voice acting are nowhere near as overbearing as the much maligned Yooka Laylee gibberish speak, and do an admirable job of conveying emotion into the few scenes where they are present. The anguishes cry of one of the Twins as you dash through a small hole and out of it’s reach is satisfying and simultaneously terrifying.
I enjoyed my time with Little Nightmares immensely. While it doesn’t set any new standards for innovation in gameplay, and it does occasionally punish you in a trial and error sort of way; the game is incredibly striking visually and will have you saying “What in the f**** is going on?!” from the start to finish of it’s story. Just be warned, the game is quite short, easily being beaten in one or two sittings. Still, it’s worth the experience if you have a PC or PS4.
