On a distant planet, ancient tribes have settled their wars through an old brutal discipline, Soccer of the Gods. Once every ten years, tribes gather in the Striker Arena tournament to battle each other under the authority of their Emperor. Each tribe enlists the bravest and fiercest of their kin to fight for glory. These few are known as the Strikers. Their spilt blood and sweat in the arena feeds the Emperor’s ever growing lust for true transcendence.
So goes the conceptual pitch to Striker Arena, a game envisioned by Wizcorp — a team of indie game designers located over in Japan — that combines elements of soccer and fantasy combat into a game of semi real-time strategy.
It all began when Wizcorp found themselves extremely frustrated by the lack of synchronous two-player experiences on the iOS, especially those that could be played entirely using only a single device, and thus decided they should do something about it. From there they began looking at their love of over-the-top soccer games — such as Nintendo’s Mario Strikers — and then started thinking about how they could translate that experience into an tablet game that smoothly allowed synchronous multiplayer action. The end result of this was a turn-based fantasy-themed game of bloody soccer, which further featured an assortment of special abilities that — when grabbed from the battlefield — could be activated at any given moment (yes, even during the other player’s turn).
Wizcorp then spent a great deal of time personally play-testing their game as they worked on it, extensively discussing the best way to ensure that Striker Arena was an engaging — fun — and easy to play experience for two people huddled closely around a single device. However — after finally achieving a rather enjoyable beta, which was met with much praise from the gaming press — they were faced with the reality of just how much more it would cost them to finish Striker Arena’s development. Wizcorp realized that they could either continue doing contract work — thusly never having the necessary free time needed to make the game — or they could go indie, thus jeopardizing the team’s financial stability.
It was for this reason — after they first decided that their game was more important than a stable paycheck — that Wizcorp approached Kickstarter with a request for $5,000, which the Kickstarter community in turn funded in full just before the buzzer began sounding. With sufficient development cash now on hand, the Japanese based team now aims to ideally deliver Striker Arena — free of charge — to iPad users everywhere some time before 2014 ends (with additional content updates arriving on a regular basis after that). Furthermore — depending on how things go after that initial launch — the team additionally plans to bring their game to Android based tablet devices sometime later on, as well as a wide range of dedicated gaming devices (such as the Wii U, PS4, and PS Vita).