Playable Demo Emerges for Red Ash

Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune enjoyed huge support for Mighty No. 9, his independently-produced spiritual sequel to the blue bomber series he launched at Capcom in the 1980s. But so far, the Kickstarter campaign for Red Ash: The Indelible Legend hasn't garnered the same support.

Red Ash, you may recall, is a return to the 3D action of the Mega Man Legends spin-off series, which seems to have gone on the backburner since Inafune left Capcom four years ago. Given the cult following Mega Man Legends enjoyed, you'd be forgiven for thinking that, even if Red Ash didn't get the same clamor of activity as Mighty No. 9 enjoyed, it would easily surpass its $800,000 minimum goal on Kickstarter. But with just five days to go, Red Ash has only managed to acquire $482,174 in pledges at the time of writing.

To help the campaign along, Inafune's studio, Comcept, has launched a demo (or as they call it, a mock-up), which it hopes will provide a better idea of how the game will handle. You can either download it and play it offline, or play it through your browser if you have the Unity plug-in loaded. Bearing in mind that it's in a very rough state, with place-holder 3D models and some shaky lighting effects, but it works, and the play area's far larger than it first appears (hint - you need to climb up the platforms, which is something we missed at first.)

The lingering question, though, is whether Red Ash can find another $300,000 within the next few days. An accompanying anime series, Red Ash: Magicada, also has five days left to run, and needs has so far reached just over $100,000 of its $150,000 goal.

More news on this as we get it.