But you can play the game now, because the designer’s cool like that

Talented game designer and artist TJ Townsend has taken his visually stunning 2.5D shoot-’em-upPythetronto Kickstarter, looking to secure — in today’s crowdfunding terms — a very reasonable $5,000 to finish up work on the game and potentially add additional features. Pledges start at $5, and that will get you a digital copy of the game when it launches in May of 2016.

If the name doesn’t sound familiar, you might recognize some of his highly-polished artwork from a series of concept pieces that were making the rounds, reimagining whatSuper Metroidwould look like in HD.

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Up to this point, TJ says he’s invested around $4,500 of his own money into the game and expects to spend at least $2,000 more on additional assets necessary to complete it. However, with the help of funding through Kickstarter, he hopes to add features like a dynamic soundtrack, hire additional artists, and perhaps add fully animated and voiced characters.

I spent some time playing around with the freeplayable buildof the game last night and came away incredibly impressed with what I saw. It’s beautiful, and if you tinker around with the pace-accelerating feature Townsend’s implemented, I’m sure you can dial up the difficulty to the level you’re accustomed to.

John and Molly sitting on the park bench

Pythetron: A 2.5d Shoot’em Up for PC, Mac and Linux[Kickstarter]

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