Two titans of immense powers so consumed by hatred, they reduced the world to ash and cinders and even now fight on against each other past death’s door. Sounds like Superbowl Sunday! Oh wait, no, it’s To The Death, a new Kickstarter game from dev studio Scary Mostro.
This is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up/beat-em-up that hopes to pull together the concepts of games such as Gradius and Double Dragon in its own creative vision. It already manages to pull in several big names in the gaming industry to help sell their vision to backers.
For starters, the game has industry vets who’ve worked on Call of Duty and upcoming shooter Titanfall. They’ve also teamed up with Cecil Kim, who worked as a Creative Director on the God of War series. That’s still not enough to sway us, though, so they threw in Bastion narrator Logan Cunningham and Metal Gear Rising soundtrack/ex-Machine Head guitarist Logan Mader. And if that still isn’t enough, sound design is by the guys at Formosa Interactive—who did work on Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3 and Hellboy 2.
In the single player mode, To the Death will see you running and gunning your way towards the end of the line after breaking free from your prison to finally (again) cut down your foe. If you choose to, you can also play in multiplayer, with both sides seeing how the other player is building up thier character, so they can adjust on-the-fly. And in the end? You’ll both have to fight the final boss trying to keep you two apart before having another epic throwdown.
While racing your way towards each other, there’ll be scores of other, nameless foes who will appear to be cut down in a fully-controllable system, claim the devs. This world, called The Crawl, will let you dynamically zoom in close and become a brawler, allowing players to slice and dice, or back out to turn the game into a shooter. You’ll even be able to combine the different skills and weapons you find and pick up and gain to create chain combos swapping between both close-in sword fights and long-range gun battles.
If you’re worried or wondering, the game’s combat system at least is apparently already fully working and playable at 60fps. Where backers come in is to help achieve more of the vision for the game, including stretch goals and fleshing the world out more.
To the Death! is slated for PC, Mac and Linux and is tentatively set for a May 2015 release. You can back it here.
