A Kickstarter project that’s literally about kicking people, Kung Fu Superstar looks like the Guitar Hero of fighting games. Developed by a crowd of ex-Lionhead devs, it’s an ostensibly Kinect-fuelled, Unreal Engine-powered martial arts trainer in which you, an aspiring stuntman, elbow-slam your way through classic kung fu fight scenes. It’s not just a Kinect job, though, with game director Kostas Zarifis planning on having Kung Fu Superstar play nice with all manner of input devices, including this year’s virtual reality goggle darling, the Oculus Rift. Presumably keyboards too. Punching!
Here’s the pitch.
It’s a laudable and ambitiousproject, aiming to make fighting games a little bit more likeactual fighting by teaching players proper techniques with names like PAK SAU and KUNG BLIP and WHACK SUEY. Quite how they’ll manage that with input devices that aren’t Kinect is a bit of a mystery, but the idea is that Kung Fu Superstar will be playable with traditional controls as well as touchscreens, virtual reality headsets and ritual animal sacrifices.
Molyneux’s part of the pitch, waxing proud about his former colleague’s prototype.There’s also an enthusiastictestimonial from a real stuntman, John Kreng, who once had his arm broken by Jet Li in a film. Awesome.
Here’s Kung Fu Superstar’s Kickstarter page. They’re after 200,000 big ones.