Heaven Variant - A rather impressive Shoot Em Up

Heaven Variant is being made by Zanrai Interactive which is a 3 man indie dev team. It is a non bullet shell shoot'em up. Its game play is a homage to 3D shooters during the PSX and Saturn era, especially Einhander and Thunder force. The player will be able to transform between  a Jet and Mecha to access different fire modes.

You will be able to pick up various weapons from enemies as you progress through the game like Missile launchers, machine guns, Flame throwers and swords. The Mecha/Jet of which the player will be piloting, is a "soul capable space fighter",  Which means that it is powered by the essence of its pilots soul , the pilot of the Haven variant is called Eind Westgunne, he is a reckless and self absorbed person whose fiery soul powers his Heaven variant mech to the max.

The story of  Heaven variant is based 200 years in the future where the earth is war torn and part of the population live on orbital space colonies, those in space have a strict policy of neutrality when dealing with earth nations and their troublesome politics. however a growing number of colonists wish to intervene in earths issues and have staged an insurrection in space to accomplish this. What complicates this is the discovery they have made of the human soul, as a result of this, the space military corporation Divinity has used this new energy source to create ferocious war machines which are referred to as soul capable vehicles," the Heaven Variant."

Haven Variant is being developed on the unreal engine and is being done in a 3D art styled inspired by animation from 25 years ago. The games sound track is inspired by a  Late 80s and early 90s  Japanese arcade era music which sounds incredible. You can vote for this game on steam green light here, and check out its website which has a developers blog here For more information on this interesting game which will be worth keeping an eye on.