Kickstarter Project Seeks to Bring a ‘Dr. McNinja’ Game to Life [Video]

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja -- a comic about a doctor who is also a ninja -- is having a good year. Not content with having a popular webcomic, teaming-up with fellow webcomic hero Axe Cop and being turned into a plush-yet-suitably-rugged action-figure, now Christopher Hastings' unstoppable hero is getting his own video game... and you can help.The game, Dr. McNinja's Radical Adventures!, is seeking crowd-funding via Kickstarter by Fat Cat Gameworks, which describes itself as "a bunch of enthusiastic and experienced game developers who are based in the unfortunately barren game development wasteland of Portland, Oregon." Designed as "a unique (read awesome) platformer with power ups [and] classic Dr. McNinja villains" for mobile devices and the web, the plan is to make the game available for free with the additional option of paying money to unlock content early (Not unlike the Angry Birds business model, which seems to have worked out pretty well for Rovio). The only problem being, as they explain, that kind of plan isn't cheap:

We need your help on this one because as much as we love making games, we don't love starving to death or losing our houses. We will be completing this game one way or the other, but with the amount of care we want to put into jamming every last bit of awesomeness in its chocolatey shell, we may take a while. If we get funding we will be able to dedicate all of our time to this thing, and not have to take out second Mortgages or take our laptops outside and code on the project from in a van down by the river to do so.

With 24 days to go to reach its $15,000 goal, all manner of rewards are available for those who'll back the project from 10,000 Shamrock Points (the game's internal currency, making content available for players) for $5 pledges to t-shirts, limited edition Dr. McNinja's Radical Adventures Soda ("100% of your daily recommended dose of awesomeness and no caffeine," apparently), making an appearance in the game yourself ($1,500 or above) or even being flown from anywhere in the U.S. to hang out with Dr. McNinja creator Christopher Hastings in New York ($10,000 or above). Why so generous with the incentives? "We certainly don't expect you to just give us money out of the kindness of your hearts," explain the Fat Cat collective, adding that "ninjas don't have hearts (Technically not true, but they would want you to believe that)."

If you need more reason to give, then go and play the beta version of the game to see what you'd be contributing to, or just watch the video: