Wekufu is a side-scrolling action-platformer with combo focused combat featuring hand drawn animations, one of the games campaigns biggest selling points, currently up on Kickstarter by developer Stickerb Games, a solo developer and artist based out of Puerto Montt, Chili. Each frame of animation is hand drawn, and dark and moody to reflect it’s story of evil spirits corrupting nature, and all backgrounds hand painted. The campaign page boasts that every sprite is hand drawn, and no animation is reused, and all assets are developed with 4K resolution in mind. If their goal is met they plan to release the game on Steam as well as XBox One, and XBox Series X and S.
The game draws a great deal of inspiration from Mapuche culture, an indigenous culture of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, and their legends surrounding the Kallfumalen, a female warrior said to have fought for the Mapuche and saved them from an ancient conflict. It follows a young warrior named Sakinko on her quest to avenge her father and protect her people from evil spirits known as the Wekufu, the game’s namesake.
Gameplay consists of platforming as well as combat, the real bread and butter of the gameplay. Each encounter with the Wekufu will be dangerous and require and understanding of the game mechanics to overcome. Sakinko has two primary weapons: Her bow and arrows for ranged combat and her bamboo spear for melee. The spear offers a wide range, but it’s slow, and precise timing will be required. Her bow and arrows, in contrast, are fast and can be used to cripple enemies with well aimed head shots or slow them down with repeated shots to the body. In addition to these weapons she has her Newen, or spiritual powers that allow her to do such things as deal more damage with her weapons, shield herself from damage, and increase the size of her jump to each otherwise unreachable areas as well as attack her enemies from above.
Now let’s talk backer rewards: If you want to get yourself a copy of the game, Steam keys are offered starting at the $14 tier, and a digital copy for the platform of your choice at the $28 tier. A digital soundtrack also opens at that $28 tier. Starting at about $41 you can get yourself the digital artbook, and beta access starts at the $62. It’s worth noting that all these tiers also include access to the Backer Role on the Wekufu Discord server and that actually starts at just the basic $2 “Support the game!” tier. Of course there are other rewards at higher tiers I didn’t mention here so if you want to really invest some capital, be sure to give those a onceover on the campaign page.
Stickerb Games is looking to raise $10,167 to make Wekufu a reality. They’re currently sitting at $1,155 as of writing this article. They still have a ways to go but still have 18 days to make it happen, so if you think this is something you might be interested in consider stopping by the Kickstarter and maybe backing. Stretch goals include releasing the game on Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4 and 5.
