The Kickstarter campaign for top-down arcade-style shooter Xeno Crisis proves there’s still plenty of love out there for Sega gaming consoles. Launched on December 11, the Kickstarter for the game doubled its funding goal as of December 24, with a current total of $63,989 raised.

“Thanks to the growing community supporting Xeno Crisis we are now over 200% funded and we continue to march ever closer to our next stretch goal,” Bitmap Bureau, the game’s developer, wrote in an update posted to the campaign’s page on December 24. “Thank you for all the excellent suggestions and feedback, please keep those coming and we’ll try to address them as best we can between all the festivities.”

A Top-Down Aliens

Inspired by SciFi films like Aliens and top-down shooters of the ’80s and ’90s, Xeno Crisis pits players against waves of alien enemies with eight-way directional aiming and a variety of different weapons at their disposal. Maps and other gameplay elements are procedurally generated, with randomization elements added in to keep the gameplay fresh.

“We want the game to look, feel and sound like the classic Mega Drive games of the ’80s and ’90s, but also add some new elements that weren’t so common in games of that era,” Bitmap writes.

To this end, they’ve also enlisted the help of notable figures from classic game development to ensure the game feels authentic. Henk Nieborg, the pixel artist behind The Misadventures Of Flink for Sega Genesis and more recent titles like Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, has been enlisted to help design the game’s art. Chip-tune musician Savaged Regime, meanwhile, is assisting in the creation of the game’s music.

The most notable element of the game, however, is that it will have a physical release for the Sega Genesis Master Drive and Dreamcast systems, with a cartridge made alongside the game’s digital release. It joins the short list of new games being made for older consoles, niche field among indie developers in recent years. Other such titles include Tanglewood, a platformer which is currently in its alpha stage.

Xeno Crisis’ Kickstarter campaign is set to end January 11, with a release window of October 2018. If its early success is any indication, it’ll definitely be an indie title to keep an eye on moving into the new year.

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About the Author

Keenan McCall

Keenan McCall is a freelance journalist with experience in a variety of areas, but for whatever reason, he decided to cover everything related to nerd culture. From games to comics, anime to figures, TV to books and music, he’s always looking for what’s new from the world of entertainment and what it means for the people who consume it. It should also be noted that his Twitter feed is less a series of insightful thoughts and opinions so much as it’s a steady stream of memes, references and cute animal videos.

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