A free campaign demo for Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is now available to download on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Fursan al-Aqsa - The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a Third Person Shooter game that addresses the Israel x Palestine conflict from a Palestinian perspective, breaking the cliché of representing Muslim Arabs as Terrorists, Bandits, Villains and the Americans/Israelis the "Good Guys" and "Heroes" of History. The biggest reason I developed this game is because I am son of Palestinian immigrants, and my Father, before coming to Brazil, was a Soldier of the Palestinian Resistance against Israel, from the Fatah Group of leader Yasser Arafat (this always was a source of pride for me), and I, as I have always been passionate about games since I was a child, always dreamed to play a game where we Arabs, Muslims were the heroes of history, not the "terrorists". This game is inspired by Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Insurgency Sandstorm, Max Payne and the classic shooter Goldeneye 007.

Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque - Free Campaign Demo Released

Updated Demo "Infiltration"

Download PC Version: http://tiny.cc/ym0zsz

Download PS3 Version: http://tiny.cc/zm0zsz

Download Xbox360 Version: http://tiny.cc/1n0zsz

The Team

This game is being developed since 2017 by one person (me, Nidal Nijm, and Unreal Engine Licensed Developer), in a modified version of the UDK Engine (Unreal Engine 3). But I can say that the project as a whole was born in 2009, when I started my studies (alone) on game development. But at that time I used another engine, the FPS Creator. However, the game in its current form was born in August 2017.

Gameplay and Story Details

Story - You play as Ahmad al-Ghazzawi, a young Palestinian student who was unjustly tortured and imprisoned by Israeli soldiers for 5 years, had his entire family killed in an Israeli air strike and now after getting out of prison, he seeks revenge against those who tortured him, killed his family and stolen his homeland, joining a new Palestinian Resistance Movement called Fursan al-Aqsa - The Knights of al-Aqsa Mosque. During his stay in prison, Ahmad met the leader of that group, Abu Ubayda, and learned about the story behind the Fursan al-Aqsa group, that the group was preparing a major military operation against Israel, "Operation Muhammad al-Ayash "(in honor of the great leader of the Intifada - Palestinian Resistance, Muhammad al-Ayash), however, a member of that group was actually a traitor, an infiltrated Israeli spy, which resulted in the failure of the operation, the death of all its members and arrest of its leader, Abu Ubayda. Ahmad, decides to complete this operation alone, which is when he receives all the instructions from the mission by Abu Ubayda, which reveals to Ahmad the location of a backpack with some equipment that will help him in this mission. Then the game starts.

Gameplay - Being a gamer since when I know myself, I looked for inspiration in the best action games in the industry (in addition to the inspirations I already mentioned at the beginning), in the great shooter classics. The game draws heavily from the source of the classics like Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark (N64), with many mission objectives to complete each "mission", such as destroying security cameras, sabotaging some Israeli equipment, finding documents that reveal more details about the game’s plot, planting bombs, invading Israeli bases, finding and murdering a specific enemy, rescuing Palestinian civilians, hijacking vehicles, taking down planes.

I also looked for inspiration in the Hitman series and Mission Impossible (N64), where some missions require the player to disguise himself to access some areas of the map, talk to some NPC, to progress in the mission.

I also want to mention the inspiration I sought in Dark Souls series, as the game has a very high level of difficulty, however, without being frustrating. For those who consider themselves a Rambo, I would like to warn you that firing aimlessly without a planned strategy will result in "Mission Failed" (lol). I took almost 6 months just to program the enemies' Artificial Intelligence, and I am very proud of the final result.

And recently, after the excellent feedback I received from the free Demo that I launched in June (700 downloads in 2 months), I added the Bullet Time effect, in the best Max Payne style, and that if well used by the player, can compensate for the elevated difficulty.

Nor can I forget the inspiration I sought in Hotline Miami (violence and strategy to kill enemies), and also, Mortal Kombat. Yes, this game is inspired by Mortal Kombat. In some stealth missions the player must use only the knife to kill enemies. And that knife kills system is basically a Fatality in the best Mortal Kombat X style, with X-Ray effect.

Also, a recent update that I added to the game was the ability to switch the view between first and third person, following the request of many gamers who tested the demo.

Other features:

• Third-Person Shooter
• Intense Urban Warfare Combat
• Many Gameplay Modes
• Ranking System
• Realistic Weapons
• Driveable Vehicles
• Missions across real places in Palestine
• Local Split-Screen Multiplayer
• Xbox360 Gamepad support on PC
• Soundtrack by famous Palestine Artists

In addition, I worked very well on optimizing the game (I improved the polygonal occlusion system of Unreal Engine 3). The game runs at 60 fps on old PCs (my ASUS ROG notebook is from 2010), reaches 300 fps on current PCs. And on consoles, even with split-screen multiplayer, the game runs smoothly at 60fps on the PS3 and Xbox360, something that a lot of big studios weren't able to achieve at the time. I think many PS4 games don't run at 60fps also.

Platforms I plan to launch

I intend to officially launch the game on PC (itch.io platform), and in the future on Steam also, after I manage to get some profit on sales through itch.io (because at the moment I do not have the value of U$ 100,00 of the Steam Publishing fee).

But because I use a modified version of the UDK Engine (the free version of Unreal Engine 3), and the modification I did was to be able to port the engine to the PS3 and Xbox360 consoles, back in 2015, in another project of mine ( http://tiny.cc/1w22qz), so I decided to launch for these consoles too (like a homebrew game).

I even contacted Sony and Microsoft to officially launch the game on old generation consoles, however, they no longer accept PS3 and Xbox360 games (PS4 and XboxOne only), and unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge to port Unreal Engine 3 for these consoles.

But in the future, I intend to release the next episodes of this game on these new consoles, however, I will have to remake the game on Unreal Engine 4 (maybe even Unreal Engine 5).

Promotional Videos:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/fursan-al-aqsa-knights-of-al-aqsa-mosque/videos

Promotional Images:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/fursan-al-aqsa-knights-of-al-aqsa-mosque/images

Get involved with the forum thread for the game on @XONEHQ - https://www.xboxone-hq.com/postt748.html

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