The newly founded Black Forest games has recently risen from the ashes of defunct Gothic 4 and Desperados developer Spellbound, but before pursuing their goal to become "recognised as a leader in the creation of games for the RPG and strategy genres", the German studio are looking to Kickstarter to help fund a platformer.

Project Giana is a modern revamp on the classic 80s platformer The Great Giana Sisters, which is best remembered by 8-bit gamers as that game that look a little bit too much like Super Mario Bros for Nintendo's liking. Following the successful Nintendo DS revival of the franchise (AusGamers 9/10), Spellbound had been working on bringing the sisters to HD platforms and Black Forest has managed to salvage that operation, but is reaching out to the crowd so they don't have shelve the project until it can be funded internally.

So… why does this new project exist? For Giana’s twenty-fifth anniversary, we wanted to do something of our own, with full creative control and no “dumbing down”. Publishers tend to avoid titles they can’t groom for risk and profit, which is fair enough for a business, so we had to finance Giana ourselves.

We’ve stuck to the classic core gameplay, but we’ve also expanded it with something new. Don’t worry – it’s not a random idea out of the blue, but builds on the central theme of our heroine transforming from “cutie” to “punky” within a dream world. You can now switch between both forms at will – any time, anywhere, and each form has its own abilities.

Black Forest asserts that the game is already largely playable, and backs that claim up with some remarkably polished gameplay footage.

Check out the Kickstarter pitch video below (HD page here), or watch this gameplay trailer for more complete in-game action, and head over to the Kickstarter page if you want to get involved.