Alpha Dog Games’ website describes better than I can what it will unleash on the world in a couple of weeks: a “visceral WHACK ‘N’ SMASH action-adventure game in a dark fantasy world.”

Yikes.

Alpha Dogs is a mobile gaming company based in Bedford, N.S., founded by three veterans of the game development industry to capitalize on the growing market for simulation games on mobile devices. The company will release its first offering, called “Wraithborne”, in the next few weeks, and hopes to establish it as a franchise, with many more iterations of Wraithborne to follow.

“We’re trying to bring the magic of big consoles onto phones and tablets,” said CEO Jeff Cameron in an interview. “We’re creating a whole new fantasy world. We’ve barely scratched the surface with our first game.”

Cameron is the technical expert behind the partnership, and has teamed up with designer Nick Riley and Artist Shawn Woods to form the new company. All three have worked in other parts of the world, for major game studios or larger companies, and are bringing that expertise into the venture.

They decided to target the mobile sector because, first of all, it is a growing segment whereas simulation games on Facebook are declining in popularity, and second, you can develop mobile games more quickly than those on Facebook. The three founders have developed Wraitborne in about six months – a feat that would have been impossible with a Facebook game.

From the outset, Cameron said, they aimed for two facets that would separate them from other mobile games: “graphical polish” and what they call “whack ‘n’ smash, action-driven” animation.

So far, the signs are good they’ve achieved it. They released a trailer for the $2.99 game on YouTube last month and it has received 20,000 hits. They’ve also signed a U.S. marketing partner, a midsized outfit called Crescent Moon, to help promote the title.

The trio has financed Alpha Dog this far from their own pockets and with a $61,500 loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and they said it’s too soon to say whether they will be raising money.

“We’re at the point of launching our game,” Cameron said. “If the game does really well, we may not need more money.”

He said that success of the initial Wraithborne could lead to offers from large studios to work on some of their products. That would bring money into the company and allow the principals enough flexibility to work on other Wraithborn products.