Alpha Beta Gamer

Bears Can’t Drift is a fun kart racer inspired by classics like Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64, that features split screen action, allowing you to play with friends and drift your way to victory.

Bears Can’t Drift is setting out to rectify the problem that there are so few split screen multiplayer games out these days, aiming to be a fun Mario Kart style racer friends can enjoy together. It features 2-4 player split-screen as well as single player and allows you to cross-combine power-ups to make more powerful ones.

Coming to PC, OUYA and hopefully PS4, it’s an enjoyable multiplayer experience that proves that bears can drift – rather well as it turns out!

Checkout the Kickstarter & Download the Beta

A Rite from the Stars is a 3D Point & Click adventure set in a beautiful yet dangerous land, where you play a mute boy who has to master 3 trials (and a final one) in order to become a man and a legend.

Your character (Kirm) will have to demonstrate that he is braver, smarter and quicker than he seems. Each of the 3 trials in A Rite From The Stars has a different play-style. ’Wisdom’ behaves the most like a normal point & click adventure, ‘courage’ allows you to call on your spirit animal in order to overcome dangers, while ‘spirit’ (our favourite) allows you to enter a the spirit world where you’ll be able to commune with some very odd things.

A Rite To The Stars is shaping up to be a weird and wonderful Point & Click adventure with plenty of variety and inventive puzzle design that promises no pixel hunts, pointless walks or inventories. Did I mention your spirit animal is a meerkat and that in the spirit world you meet a giant musical talking donut?

Check out the Kickstarter & Download the Alpha Demo

Paperbound is a fast paced local multiplayer fighting game with cool gravity manipulation mechanics that’s set within the pages of old storybooks.

The game is in development from devs who have worked on Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Go Home Dinosaurs, and The Bourne Conspiracy. It plays a little like Smash Bros, but with a wonderfully dark Tim Burton-esque visual style, paper-crafting themed weaponry (letter openers, scissors, drop ink bombs, etc.) and gravity manipulation skills which allow you to magnetise your feet and stick to whatever you’re standing on.

The Paperbound Alpha demo features three Versus arenas from and one Capture the Quill arena. These arenas come from the Journey to the Center of the Earth and Skull Kingdom books. It’s a fun game with fast and frantic gameplay and a well crafted storybook visual style. Just watch out for paper cuts!

Check out the Kickstarter & Download the Alpha Demo

Weldling is a fun non-profit 2.5D physics toy-box that allows users to easily weld objects together to build a multitude of structures and even create their own mini games.

Welding plans to be 100% free to play, with no DRM, micro-transactions or adverts, while still providing hordes of content and post release DLC at no cost. The game is planned to come to PC/Mac/Linux & mobile, and features a simple and easily accessible interface that works well with a mouse and touch screen. Touch screen is where the real joy will be though, as the tactile nature of the game makes it feel like a you’re playing with a physical toy-box.

The Pre-Alpha is obviously still very early in development, but it offers a great showcase of the games build-and-play nature and it’s realistic physics engine. It’s great fun messing around with the various building blocks, the elasticity of the welds is a great touch - allowing you to create fun non-rigid structures that can be used in a variety of ways. The tools available are fairly simple at the moment, but the dev plans to add multi-player, NPC Animals, multiple layers, time manipulation, animal breeding and a variety of new tools including one which allows you to create your own shapes.

With it’s ease of use and toy-box feel, Weldling is an impressive sandbox that revels in the joy of creation - like Lego, but with bendy bits and you don’t have to clear up afterwards!

Check out the Kickstarter and Download the Pre-Alpha Free (Win, Mac, Linux & Android)

Ninja Pizza Girl is a side-scrolling platformer inspired by Mirror’s Edge and the 16-bit classic Sonic the Hedgehog, with a story based on bullying, emotional resilience, and pizza delivering ninjas!

In Ninja Pizza girl you play as a delivery girl in a cyberpunk dystopia where you have to deliver pizza in the shortest amount of time possible, all the while defending yourself from other evil delivery teens out to bully you. The idea of the game actually came from real life where a young girl was learning kung fu and delivering pizzas, hence ‘Ninja Pizza Girl’.

The parkour platforming of Ninja Pizza Girl focuses on joy and exhilaration, not a brutal exercise in masochism, making for a game that’s that’s easy to enjoy but tough to master. We’ll have a stuffed crust with extra parkour, hold the anchovies.

Check out the Kickstarter & Download the Pre-Alpha

Radial G: Racing Revolved is essentially an extremely fast first person F-Zero, set on tubular tracks, with high-end graphics and Oculus Rift Support - a high-octane, futuristic arcade racer for the VR generation.

Would be Captain Falcon’s will be able to strap themselves into the cockpit of a large selection of futuristic antigravity racers and race against 32 opponents (Human & AI controlled), all in glorious 1080p at 60fps. The feeling of speed is fantastic as you roar along the twisty, tubular tracks, recalling fond memories of F-Zero 64 and F-Zero GX. There is the option to switch to an extrenal view of the vehicle, but first person mode is where the action is.

You can play the Single player Alpha Demo now (a multiplayer demo is in the works), either with a standard screen or with the Oculus Rift headset. Be warned though, the rift version may melt your eyes!

Play the Alpha Demo

Mighty Tactical Shooter is a an old school 2D arcade shoot-em-up with a major twist – turn based combat.

The combat is a clever system that pauses the game and allows you to visually predict how your shots and movement will play out, allowing you to make it through situations that wouldn’t be possible in a normal shooter. As well as the standard missiles and lasers, you also have added to some very cool gravity based weaponry, which allows you to bend the paths of bullets to make the enemy shoot themselves.

The turn based combat system allows for plenty of depth, especially when paired with the RPG-like levelling system. Even though it’s turn based, Mighty Tactical Shooter has a great flow to the combat, and the pixel-art graphical style is excellent. Imagine Gradious with Fallout 3‘s V.A.T.S. system and a touch of FTL and you’re nearly there.

Download the Pre-Alpha Demo, Free

Bulb Boy is gorgeous 2D point & click horror adventure about a boy with a glowing head (or a bulb) with a gameplay style inspired by Machinarium and Gobliiins.

The animation in Bulb Boy is like a high quality animated movie, set in a dark and creepy Tim Burton-esque world. As your little glowing boy explores the creepy house, you’ll solve puzzles, defeat monsters, unlock new abilities and uncover why darkness has descended on your house and where your GRANDPAraffin and Mothdog have disappeared to.

The Alpha Demo is a short 5 minute taster of the proposed final product, but is an excellent showcase for the point & click gameplay and it’s wonderful animation. Your glowing little bulb boy is instantly likeable, by the end of the demo you’ll be itching to explore the rest of the house and the rest of this beautifully crafted game. Bulb Boy looks set to shine very brightly upon its release.

Play the Alpha Demo (Win, Mac & Linux)

In FranknJohn you use your head (literally), it’s a a head-swinging roguelike smash em'up with fast paced gameplay and the ability to change your abilities by equiping various different heads and body parts.

FranknJohn is a reanimated child with the body of Frank and the head of John, connected by a chain that he can swing around and smash into enemies. Being a reanimated corpse has it’s benefits, mainly that you can swap body parts to customize your stats and equip dozens of different skullcaps which can alter the gameplay drastically.

The fast paced action orientated gameplay is inspired by SNES classics like Super Smash TV and Zombies Ate My Neighbours, with aspects taken from recent games like Dark Souls and The Binding of Isaac. Graphically the game is wonderful, full of snazzy effects, vibrant colours and Tim Burton-esque character design, while the Soundtrack is being composed by FTL’s Ben Prunty.

With it’s randomly genetrated level design and a vast array of swappable skullcaps, FranknJohn looks set to offer plenty of variety and replayability. The challenge arena does a good job of demonstrating the excellent fast-paced, head-swinging gameplay - FranknJohn may be a reanimated corpse, but there’s plenty of life in this game.

Visit the Kickstarter & Download the Challenge Arena

Twin Souls is a great looking 3rd person cel shaded stealthy assassin game with supernatural overtones, inspired by Tenchu, Metal Gear Solid, Dishonored and Mark of the Ninja. We covered the Prototype a while ago on ABG, but as they’ve just started a Kickstarter campaign, we figured it was time for an update.

You are Aragami, a spirit of vengeance summoned by Yamiko, a mysterious girl imprisoned in a guarded fortress. As you come back to life, your souls are bound together, sealing your destinies. To achieve your goal you must engage in a dark journey through land and memories to destroy her prison seals. As Aragami, you have the power of ‘Shadow Control’. The darkness is your ally and the source of your strength. You have a diverse array of Shadow Powers at your disposal. As you advance you will need to sneak past guards, teleport between shadows, create your own areas of darkness and strategically assassinate your targets.

The prototype was made some time ago, and utilises a different game engine than the current Twin Souls game, but is features the same stealth and shadow based gameplay and beautiful cel shaded graphics. Gameplayfocuses on stealthy, ninja-style combat, harkening back to the Tenchu games, where a full on assault is often suicide. It’s a satisfyingly true ninja assassin game where where planning, precision and timing are paramount.

Download the Prototype and check out the Kickstarter campaign

Posts tagged Kickstarter