All Walls Must Fall, But Only Kickstarter Backers Get Closed Alpha

Indie developers are learning to utilize rabid backer fanbases to bring extra polish to their projects. Here’s a group of people who already love what you’re trying to do, so why not let them help you do it? Backers who get in on the campaign for the tactical, tech-noir, All Walls Must Fall, will have their chance to pitch in when the closed alpha launches in May.

Developer, inbetweengames, has been working on All Walls Must Fall since April 2016. The game has been in Pre-Alpha testing for several months, but only for friends and family. Now they’ve decided to open the experience up to a wider (backer exclusive) audience. Kickstarter backers have been extremely receptive to the isometric, time control tactics based gameplay, fully funding the project in only 5 days.

All Walls Must Fall is set in a dystopian Berlin, where the Cold War never ended. Both sides of the conflict have spent the past 150 years using time manipulation technology to observe and counter the others’ every move. Now with the threat of a rogue nuclear strike looming, both sides must venture back in time to find out who is behind the attack and how they can prevent it from occurring.

Show Your Work

Where it used to be important to have a demo during crowdfunding, being able to move swiftly into an alpha build has definite benefits. Not only are you showing off a more complete version of the game, but alpha builds are usually far enough along to garner useful feedback. Exactly the sort of feedback that can take a cool concept and polish it into a great game.

Prior to launching the Kickstarter, inbetweengames received €70 000 in funding from the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as a €16 000 Unreal Dev Grant from Epic Games. This, combined with their own savings, has allowed them to get pretty far in development without securing a publisher. That’s not to say they didn’t try though.

“Most publishers think of the game as too niche, too hardcore, too complex, too old school, or too political to make the kind of profit they expect,” the campaign explained.

The devs hoped that by bringing All Walls Must Fall to Kickstarter they would find a group of people who were looking for something a little different. Something that would resonate with them in a genre that offers a lot of potential for unique gameplay ideas. So far over 700 backers have stepped in to answer their call and with several weeks left it’s likely more will join them.

Backers will get access to Closed Alpha shortly after the end of the Kickstarter campaign. The team plans update this version regularly. Feedback, updates, and additional features will be introduced every 3-6 weeks until All Walls Must Fall launches in Open Alpha on Steam Early Access later this year.