Every now and then you find a project on Kickstarter that is just so batshit insane and creative that you want to rob your child’s trust fund to guarantee that this beautiful, bizarre baby of a game gets made. And if we were ever going to write about a game like that on Warp Zoned, I’m thrilled that it’s called Warp.
Project: Warp
Developer: PizWiz
Genre: Top-Down, Open-World, Hand-Drawn Wackiness
Platform: PC (Win, Mac, Linux), Switch (At $18,000 Stretch Goal), PS4 and Xbox One (At $20,000 Stretch Goal)
Funding Target: $7000
What Is It?
Well, that is a bit of difficult one to answer. The simple answer is that Warp is a hand-drawn, open-world adventure, but that description really does not do the game justice. Everything is made out of paper. Your character walks around on paper environments and creatures appear as doodles, either on the same sheet or as cut-outs invading your crumpled, lined space.
And then some very crazy things happen, but you really have to see it for yourself.
Your little hand-drawn hero is a bona fide treasure hunter, free to explore the game’s four worlds via the main hub city. While you’re hunting for cool fire swords and other assortment of treasure, you may come across a bad guy, or a few bad guys, or a swarm of razor-teethed bad guys. Luckily you come armed with a gun, twin-stick shooting your way out of the jaws of death. Like the best treasure-hunting games, there are also puzzles to solve, where the game acts like a point-and-click adventure.
BUT THERE’S MORE! Not content with blending genres, players can also buy a house, trade their loot, go shopping, play at the arcade, or take down crime syndicates.
Why Fund It?
The sheer ingenuity and creativity of Warp oozes out of the game like jam from a donut. It just looks delightfully delicious, and if the trailer does not compel you to ping the game’s developer, “PizWiz,” some money, you truly are dead inside. I had not heard of “PizWiz” until Warp, but he has another game called
Not to mention that the game’s score is being composed by Australian artist “liltommyj,” who manages to flit between styles and genres, from haunting cinematic tracks to some truly wacky tunes.
Best Rewards?
- $15 ($10 Early Bird) – “You get a cheap copy of the game! Congrats, man! You’ll do great things in this world. I love you.”
- $25 – “Get the game early and help us work through the bugs. Like beetles.”
- $50 – “Wowie. Get the game in a nice little disk and get the cool mug we designed!”
- $85 – “Oh yeah! Get the full collectors edition plus an 8in x 10in painting on canvas by me, PizWiz.” (Limited to 50)
- $110 – “Get the full collectors edition plus a 30 page, 8.5in x 11in artbook.”
- $250 – “For you people who want to put a little bit of your own magic into the game. Work with me, PizWiz, to design your very own boss for Warp. Also get the collectors edition and artbook.”
Until Next Time…
I really want one of the mugs available through the $250+ tiers, and I also really hope this campaign hits its $18,000 stretch goal, because (like many games) this would be perfect on the Switch. And if Warp manages to raise over $30,000, the hub city will be expanded into a metropolis. Other stretch goals include a fire mechanic, a land drawn with crayons, and a land made entirely out of clay (and also something about soup).
Now I want to drink soup from my Warp mug!
