With funding for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero reaching the $500,000 (USD) mark, WayForward has announced that their goal of a secondary playable campaign called Risky Mode can be realized. In Risky Mode, you get to play as Shantae’s arch-nemesis Risky Boots.
The story in Risky Mode takes place after Shantae wakes up from her premonition-like dream. Upon leaving for her adventure, a Tinkerbat reports to its boss, Risky Boots, who then hatches a plan that will trigger a new series of events. With a certain half-genie in your way, your job as Risky is to raid and pillage Sequin Land in search of items and clues that will grant you access to the Genie Realm. As Uncle Mimic, inventor and Shantae’s parental figure, flees, he leaves a behind series of blueprints you will need to collect as you traverse the island.
Risky can slash at enemies with her scimitar, use her grappling hook to get across high places, fire various types of ammo with her pistol, and summon her minions to do her bidding. By acquiring Tinker-Tools throughout the game, you can upgrade your pistol and find even more items, like the Shoulder Cannon. You will visit all the same locations in Risky Mode as you do in Shantae’s story, but the progression order is shuffled and will be a completely new experience.
There are only four days left to support Shantae: Half-Genie Hero on Kickstarter, and plenty more additional chapters, playable modes for supporting characters Bolo, Sky and Rottytops, fully recorded voice-overs, and television-quality animated cutscenes are in need of funding. If you are interested in WayForward’s games as well as Shantae, you can read our Crowdfunding Spotlight as well as try out the iOS version of the DSi classic Shantae: Risky’s Revenge while it’s still free. If you enjoyed the animations and voice-overs from Skullgirls or are a fan of the Mega Man games by Inti Creates, whose staff are also working on Mighty No. 9, you will be pleased to see there are people involved with both titles who are working on this game.
The game is planned to release for all HD platforms (Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows). You can check out the Kickstarter page for more details and can pledge money either via Kickstarter or PayPal. (Note: There is usually a longer time limit to donate via PayPal compared to Kickstarter.)
Also, be sure to check out our video with WayForward in Los Angeles as we check out some of their games:
