Two-person UK-based indie developer Discmach are seeking Kickstarter funding for their upcoming game, Just Another Bug Hunt, and have released a pre-alpha demo of the game to drum up interest.
Bug Hunt is a 2-d sidescrolling shooter that allows players to fend of hordes of insect-like aliens as one of four characters: one man, two women, and a robot.
There are a number of gameplay twists that Discmach of thrown into the formula. The environments will be randomly generated, with their geography having a strategic effect on weapon effectiveness. Players can also deploy defensive structures and turrets to fend off the aliens, which attack in waves.
Aside from the hordes of bugs and challenging bosses, players will also have access to four different A.I. familiars, or pets, that will aid them in battle. A mothership will also be responsible for sending in munitions and turrets.
The demo presents a survival-mode scenario, although the final game will have a full fledged campaign. You can only pick the male character, but the other three will have different specialties and attributes. The developers heavily emphasize that the demo is rough around the edges, and indeed it is. Aiming and firing one’s weapon was startlingly confusing, and it wasn’t clear if I was doing it wrong or if the demo was, for lack of a better word, bugged. In the end, I spent most of it hopping around like a madman, trying to figure out why my chaingun refused to fire more than one shot every five seconds, while being relentlessly pursued by ravenous aliens. The drab looking colors and pixel graphics also made it hard to see what was going on at times.
At any rate, Discmach have accumulated £1,402 of its £3000 goal, and with 12 days to go, it looks like they’re reasonably on track. Should they exceed this goal by £500, they will add an Arena mode that will presumably be similar to gameplay in the demo. Should they achieve an additional £500, local co-op will be introduced, although it’s currently unclear if this will support two or four player co op.
Discmach are looking to release Just Another Bug Hunt by January 2015.