Gorgeous 2.5D shoot-’em-up Pythetron now on Kickstarter

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-up Pythetron to 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 what Super Metroid would look like in HD.

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 free playable build of 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.

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