Hi everyone! We are members of Graffity, an AR game studio based in Tokyo. We are the creators of the AR shooting game “Pechabato” that has exceeded 160,000 downloads in Japan. We have begun planning and developing a first of its kind, an AR hero shooter game, “Leap Trigger,” so that more players around the world can experience our games. With your backing, we want to create a brand new genre of games, aptly named, Augmented Reality Hero Shooter. We hope you will support and join us in our journey to make “Leap Trigger” the best game it can be, and to take a step with us towards expanding the ever growing horizon of augmented reality.

Leap Trigger is a free-to-play AR mobile hero shooter game where you become a champion and fight alongside mystical and man-made “buddy”. Become a champion with unique ability, move your body, avoid the opponent’s bullets, and hit the opponent with a Ultimate Skill from an advantageous position. Buddy that support battles also have unique abilities. Build the deck with 3 buddies and fight to the end. Expand your battlefield at home, in the park or at school and show ‘em what you’re made of!

* Operating environment

• iOS: iOS13.0 or later, iPhone6s or later
• Android: ARCore supported devices

Only in the US, the game will be released around February 2021, and it will be released sequentially in other countries in the latter half of 2021 and onwards, so receiving rewards may be delayed depending on the country where you live.

There are three tips for winning a battle. First, let’s talk about the unique abilities of champions and buddies. Champions and Buddies have unique abilities that you can use several times during the battle. How to use those unique abilities greatly influences the result of the battle.

Next is how you move your body. Your mobile device has become a weapon, and the game system allows you to freely use the weapon by tracking the movement of your mobile device. It also tracks the opponent’s target that moves in conjunction with the other player’s movements. That is why how to move your mobile device is the key to victory. It is important not only to move the mobile device, but also to move the body to avoid the opponent’s bullets and aim at the opponent from an advantageous position.

Finally, how to use champions and buddies. Build the deck with 1 champion and 3 buddies to start the battle. There are three types of roles that the buddies take on, Striker, Defender, and Jammer, each of which has unique strengths and weaknesses. Understand the play style of your opponent and summon buddies that will support you the most.

By supporting us to improve Leap Trigger, let’s make AR Hero Shooters the hottest new genre in a world where augmented reality meets innovative and playworthy games!

In this world, Leap Trigger (LT) is popular as a sport that people all over the world are enthusiastic about. LT is part of everyone’s culture, and you can see students playing LT in the city and fans checking the schedule of official games by the world famous Champions.

Among such people, we will introduce to you, some of the world-famous players referred to by everyone as Champions.You can choose from a selection of brave Champions, and use their abilities and weapons to play the game.

Let’s check out their weapons and unique abilities. 

SATELLITE is a born leader who has a very well-balanced set of skills, and he has a lot of fans thanks to his play style of fighting his opponents head-on.

The Ultimate Skill “SATELLITE LASER” that he uses, has both the dramatic impact and game-changing power to fascinate all his fans, and it is exactly the kind of weapon and Ultimate Skill that make him worthy to be called a Champion.

“SATELLITE LASER” is a powerful Ultimate Skill that causes great damage to all opponents in the target range.

It is necessary to find the right timing to use this Ultimate Skill, because it can not be repeatedly used in a short amount of time, but there is no doubt that it is an Ultimate Skill with absolute power that can decide who wins, and who loses.

SUNSHINE is everyone’s idol, and a girl who loves and imitates ninja skills and uses special skills to distract the opponent while serving them her deadly hits.

The Ultimate Skill “SAKURA CLOAKER” allows her to hit her opponent out of the blue.

Quickly hiding during a dangerous moment, and breaking the rhythm of a well-defended opponent is just like the fighting style of a ninja; SUNSHINE makes the fight a tricky one to win.

ORCA is a ruthless champion who is good at fighting to strategically hunt down opponents, even if his own buddy collapses as part of the strategy.

The Ultimate Skill “SNARE ORDER” implants the bombs in the field. When activated, the bomb stuns the opponent and restricts the opponent’s movement.

It will be difficult to overturn the battle situation against ORCA’s ruthless and well calculated battle plan. 

Next, let’s check out the unique abilities of the buddies that appear in Leap Trigger. In the world of Leap Trigger, there are two types of Buddies, Monsters and Drones, which support the Champions during battles.

LEOBLAZE is a mythical monster who is a living and fire-breathing representation of “Vigor”.

The skill “Flame Blast” uses flames, suitable for the monster’s hot-blooded nature. When this skill is activated, LEOBLAZE shoots a stream of flame toward the enemy for a certain period of time, and the enemy surrounded by the flame gets continuously hurt.  LEOBLAZE has skills specializing in attacks; even after the skills’ activation period, enemies HP continues to decrease for a certain period of time from the burns it received.

By using LEOBLAZE well, you can not only damage the opponent, but also control the opponent’s movement by making them avoid LEOBLAZE’s deadly streams of fire.

SURGE is a very aggressive drone that uses a Penetrate Surge that rushes straight toward the enemy.

While this skill is being activated, it also has the effect of hurting all the enemies it touches, and even stunning it. However, SURGE itself is defenseless during its skill activation, so choose wisely when determining the timing and direction of skill activation.

BLLURE is a magnificent and alluring mythical monster and a living representation of “bewitchment”.

As you might be able to imagine from the monster’s beautiful silhouette wrapped by an aura of mysterious charm, BLLURE can form a magical force field that recovers its allies.

If the core in the center of the magic is destroyed, the effect will be lost, but if you protect the core well, you will forever recover with the BLLURE’s merciful powers while the magic is alive.

As you might be able to tell from its appearance, GRADION has an enormous amount of “dignity” even compared to other mythical monsters.

GRADION can release a skill called “METEOR IMPACT” : a powerful explosion of energy drawn from the dimension it dwells in. Although it takes some time to charge up enough power to activate the skill, the natural energy once released causes a big explosion that impacts everything and anything around it. 

If you encounter this monster, do not hesitate to attack it, because if you do not defeat it before its skills are activated, you may be in deep trouble.

Through Leap Trigger, we want to create a new game genre called AR Hero Shooter with all of our Backers. In Japan, where we are based, games of various genres are born. And we know that new genres of games are always created by enthusiasts of such games. Backers, your enthusiasm creates a new game genre. We are taking on this challenge of creating a new genre, but we don’t think we can make AR hero shooter games just by ourselves. That is why we want you to be on board as co-developers of Leap Trigger.

Your contributions and enthusiasm will make Leap Trigger become the best game it could be. With your support and feedback, we will be able to brush up on, and perfect this game. Let’s create this brand new game genre called AR hero shooter game together!

Leap Trigger values ​​the connection between people, users, and our players very much. We want to forge new encounters and relationships through Leap Trigger and for you to enjoy the game with your friends and family both online and offline. We believe that if we can create a genre of AR hero shooter games, we will be able to connect our players with new friends and create lasting memories.

We are not the only ones trying to create a new genre of games called the AR hero shooter. It is with you, Backers, that we are creating a community of AR hero shooter enthusiasts, and making this genre popular around the world. We as the Leap Trigger team values the connection between us and the Backers, as well as connections between Backers, and make this community an engaging and exciting one. In order to achieve such a community, we have created the community goals below.

Graffity is a company that develops AR Shooting Games based in Japan. Founded in 2017, the multiplayer shooting game “Pechabato” that uses an AR playing field and shooting style was released in Japan in 2018. It surpassed 160,000 downloads, received a review of 4.5/5.0, and was featured on App Store.

In addition, we developed a location-based AR shooting game “HoloBreak”, which was played by many people at the amusement park operated by BANDAI NAMCO Amusement Inc., and we were able to record 9.2 out of 10 for overall play satisfaction level. It has been adopted in gym class in Japanese high schools for a month and a half and was featured in various Japanese mass media outlets.

It was January 2020 that Graffity began to tackle the challenge of creating an AR hero shooter. We wanted to create a new type of AR shooting game so that many players around the world can enjoy it, regardless of how far in real life distance the players are situated.

Our team extremely values all player feedback for development. We conduct user interviews once every two weeks and continue to improve based on each feedback. Please join us in this challenge and help us develop an AR Hero Shooter that can be enjoyed by many people.

Leap Trigger is a first of its kind AR game in which you can fight alongside buddies! I am excited about the game system which will allow me to play while moving my body in the real world, and this is a game I’m very much looking forward to playing myself. I would love for many people to also get to play and enjoy this game.

BANDAI NAMCO Amusement Inc. is a company that develops games, experiences, and original interfaces with cutting edge technology to enable entertainment and gameplay to escape the confines of a screen or a monitor. Graffity’s HoloBreak that was developed in our BANDAI NAMCO Accelerator Program, received extremely high ratings from both players and administrators during our open test plays at our company’s amusement park, VSPARK.Leap Trigger is an even advanced version of HoloBreak, so I cannot help but to expect amazing results. I am very much looking forward to its release.

In the history of games, console, PC, mobile, VR and all game devices included, multiplayer games is one of the most popular genres, and at our company, Thirdverse, we have invested and developed in multiplayer games like the VR sword action game, Swords of Gargantua. AR requires a completely different development concept since the games are embedded in reality, however, multiplayer AR games are sure to be popular, too. Leap Trigger utilizes the very essence of augmented reality, and its gameplay is extremely exciting. I look forward to working with Graffity and supporting them in this new endeavor.

Looking forward to seeing how players react to Graffity’s game changer in the world of AR: Leap Trigger.

Here, we will introduce the artistic and production policies of the most important champions and buddies in Leap Trigger.

The champions in Leap Trigger are the sports enthusiasts of the world.

Also, since the origin of Leap Trigger as a sport is to better understand the nature of mythical buddies, there are groups with various beliefs, and the designs of these groups embody their respective beliefs as well.

Leap Trigger has multiple groups with different ideas about how relationships between humans and buddies should look like.

A team of researchers belonging to an institution that researches monsters, working to deepen their understanding of monsters, which is the main purpose of Leap Trigger as an activity.

A team born from a student society whose main purpose is to fight alongside buddies and enjoy Leap Trigger purely as a sport.

Considering buddies as a strategic tool, the BREAKERS is a team consisting of members specializing in combat, and winning in battles.

Here, we will introduce the three champions that the player will first encounter. 

Name: SATELLITE, Affiliation: Live and Let Live

He is a born leader both as a researcher and as a player of Leap Trigger, and is a champion with a straightforward personality who always faces buddies and opponents head-on. We designed him to express his personality, fighting style, and a sense of dignity that others would look up to.

His weapon was also created with the aim of giving a sophisticated and refreshing impression that reflects his affiliation as a researcher as well as his straightforward personality and skills.

Name: SUNSHINE , Affiliation: NEXUS Union

SUNSHINE is a champion who embodies the characteristic of the  NEXUS Union , with pure curiosity and actions that make her seem like a ninja who is enjoying herself playing a really fun sports game. Although she is young, she is a top player, a hard worker, and possesses a positive personality and even enjoys her hard training to become a stronger player.

Her weapon gives off the impression of her favorite ninja aesthetics in various parts, while giving an overall Japanese impression with the color scheme.

Name: ORCA , Affiliation: BREAKERS Industrial 

He is a champion who has the self-confidence and an obey-or-die attitude like that of an aggressive emperor. Many should find it very difficult to stand in front of him and stay calm. His skills utilizing stun bombs are coldly strategic and deadly. His visual design was created to express his intelligent and ruthless fighting style and personality, that slowly but surely hunts down his opponents.

His weapon is a battleship-themed weapon that guides enemies into a disadvantageous position without actively participating in attacks. His weapon was designed this way since he is an officer who gives out orders, but does not directly engage with his opponents.

We started the buddy’s visual designs with the goal of trying to create a “world where people and monsters coexist”. The goal was not to create buddies that were educated to fight by humans, but monsters that humans can build an equal partnership with, and fight together in battles against other humans and monsters.

Under such circumstances, we applied the unique idea of “Tsukumogami”, which is a Japanese folklore based on the belief that gods and spirits dwell in tools and other objects that have been used for many years by humans.

Based on that inspiration, we created monsters that dwell in and derive from “human emotions” and “cognition” which are probably the most ancient tools and objects used by humans as we have navigated and flourished in our world.

“An existence that has always been with us, but has not been recognized or studied” became the foundational concept for the creation of the monsters in Leap Trigger. Based on this concept, we came up with the idea of Leap Trigger as a sport that was originally created by the researchers of the monsters, to better understand these monsters, that can only be viewed and measured through a special device that can look into the realm that these monsters dwell in.

From such a place, our view of the world expanded.

Then, we met a visual artist named Le Yamamura who draws creatures that dwell in a realm foreign to humans, but somehow overlap with the world (and realm) we live in.

Le Yamamura was exactly the artist we were looking for, who can create adorable “creatures of emotions” who exist in a realm/dimension only recently discovered thanks to scientific progress. In this way, our tag team was formed with Le to design several monsters that are integral to the world of Leap Trigger.

Le recalls that time when we first began to develop the monsters:

“Everyone in the team was very passionate about this project. My own “overlapping realms” that are inhabited by creatures between reality and another world, and the creatures I was trying to design for Leap Trigger had a very similar theme, so I was able to sympathize with the team very much.”

“It seemed very fun to get to play with these monsters in an augmented reality, and I took on this project because I wanted to play such a game with the Graffity team.”

First of all, we started the production by turning the concepts of “rain” and “hot-bloodedness” into monsters.

When we received multiple ideas, we felt that the concept and Le’s design matched perfectly, and our expectation that our partnership would yield great results, turned into a strong conviction.

We have also received comments from Le about the initial drafts.

“I played around with the concepts by referencing the keywords in the Leap Trigger’s world view documents that were sent to me, selected a few keywords that stood out to me the most, and searched for animals that can be the base motifs such as frogs and fish in the case of rain. I combined the motifs with ideas derived from the keywords and tried to see if it looks interesting in terms of design.”

The concept of “rain”, which has various emotional aspects, expresses a moist, slightly gloomy but beautiful impression.

The slightly mischievous, forward-looking, fighting spirit-filled naughty nuances of the feeling of “hot-bloodedness” have also been beautifully made into a monster.

Regarding the design of monsters, we asked Le about the source of inspiration and features she cares about the most.

“Because the monster is a friend and a fellow fighter, I made sure its faces weren’t too scary looking, and I was conscious of making sure that people can find some sweetness about the monster, and grow to have some emotional attachments to it.”

“Augmented reality allows you to look around a full 360 degrees, so I made sure you can recognize the monsters from any angle, and to create its details pronounced enough so that you can recognize the monsters with just a glance.”

In this way, the world view of Leap Trigger and Le Yamamura’s original world view was gracefully combined to create a number of friendly yet fierce looking, cute and graceful monsters.

DRONES

Drones developed by each champion’s organization also have their own unique skills and characteristics.

BREAKERS develop drones with aggressive forms, and drones by SAVIORS have streamlined/living organism based motifs that expresses the weapons capacity for tricky play, while LLL tends to create drones that incorporate a lot of curved surfaces.

Here, we would like to introduce one of the drones that is supposed in the game, to have been developed by the SAVIORS.

BACKSTICKER

Since it is a drone that returns bullets to the main body like a boomerang after bullets are projected during skill activation, it was designed with motifs based on streamlined form and smoothness.

Since it is a drone, it does not really resemble a living being, but we also wanted a design that people would grow to love and familiarize with.

There are many other champions, monsters, and drones each with very unique characteristics that we haven’t shown here yet, and we can’t wait to introduce everyone to them.

Please look forward to meeting our other champions, monsters, and drones!

The soundtrack was made by kyazm. kyazm is a Tokyo-based singer, guitarist, producer and recording engineer.

He is a member of numerous musician groups such as ravenknee, phai, and Satoh, and has performed at numerous festivals and music events such as Summer Sonic 2018, Ringo Music Festival 2016, and SXSW Japan Nite US tour 2016. He also actively provides scores, arrangements by guitars, as well as remixes, and he has provided soundtracks to the movie “Vinyl and Bird” (「ヴィニルと烏」) directed by Kosuke Yokota, and starring King Gnu’s vocalist Satoru Iguchi.

For Leap Trigger, he has created music inspired by games with great BGM such as .hack (dot hack) as well as incorporating his own style that combines rock, electro, hip hop, etc. while also finding inspiration from indie to pop. kyazm’s music expresses the “encounter between the old world and the new world woven together by human technology and newly discovered ancient creatures.”

All of your contributions, minus the cost for this Kickstarter, will be used to create more champions and buddies promised in the Kickstarter rewards and official release.