Following a successful Kickstarter campaign which ended earlier this month, developer Graffity is getting ready to launch their new augmented reality shooter Leap Trigger in the US next month, and they’ve set pre-orders live starting today. If you’ve seen similar AR first-person shooter style games before, then you likely know the gist of Leap Trigger. Your device acts as your window into the game’s world and as your weapon, and it uses its array of sensors to determine the real-world positioning of enemies, bullets, and yourself. It’s like some high-tech version of laser tag. One of the big features in Leap Trigger that sets it apart from the pack is your ability to summon 3 “buddies" into the game to fight alongside you. Buddies can take the form of man-made drones or Pokemon-esque little monsters with elemental abilities, and each buddy will take on a specific role of either striker, defender or jammer.

As the player you’ll take on the role of various Champions which can be unlocked in the game and each have unique personalities and abilities, giving Leap Trigger a bit of a “hero shooter" element. It’s also pretty unique among AR-based games in that while you can definitely play locally with other players, it also supports online play and will feature competitive Leagues where you can battle against others from around the world to see who is the best player. While I appreciate how cool augmented reality tech can be and how much it has advanced in recent years, and I can totally get behind a game that encourages you to actually get up and move around as opposed to just vegging out on the couch, I have yet to be totally blown away by any AR shooters up to this point. Leap Trigger seems like it has a lot of interesting things going for it though, so perhaps this will be the one to break through to the masses.

The expected launch date for Leap Trigger the US is March 17th and you can pre-order it on the iOS App Store here. Additionally this should be the Google Play Store link to the Android pre-order but as of this writing the link seems to be down, so I’m not totally sure what’s up with that. It did work earlier today so maybe just keep checking if you’re on Android and are interested in pre-registering. As for folks who are not located in the US, Leap Trigger should be expanding to additional territories in the fall.