Recently, the gaming community has been spoiled with Kickstarters for revivals of old concepts and games, and while Yooka-Laylee shattered its crowdfunding goal over the last few days, a new campaign popped up that’s also generating a lot of heat. From the same team that developed the TIE Fighter series comes the spiritual successor to X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. As lead designer David Wessman puts it, “our game is like World of Tanks meets Counter-Strike in space” and what doesn’t sound freaking awesome about that?
The game, Starfighter Inc., will be based on hard science-fiction roots, so components will break and need to be replaced, alliances will form and unravel, and most importantly, you’ll blow a lot of stuff up. There’s also a rich game mode selection, with everything from escort missions to massive firefights with ship carriers and multi-seat capital ships, depending on how high the funds raised on Kickstarter get.
Of course, physics play a huge role in space-faring games, and Starfighter Inc. is no exception. By controlling the weapons and thrusters on your ship carefully, you won’t be locked into going forward and stopping. You can spin, strafe, drop, and tumble your way through outer space, taking aim at other players the whole way. This highly realistic physics model is what separates games that focus on simulation from those that focus on arcade-style dog-fighting.
And who doesn’t love customizing your spaceship? In Starfight Inc. you’ll have a slew of customization options that range from purely aesthetic to game-changing. You can paint your ship to look bloody and mean, or give it a slick black coat to skate by unnoticed. If you want to go faster, you can tune your engines for more thrust, or tweak your rudders for fast turning. If you need easier access to weapons or system functions, you can even change the design of the inside of your cockpit.
All in all, it sounds like an incredibly immersive and satisfying gaming experience, with a legendary team of developers and designers behind it. There’s a rich pedigree of greatness on the team, from Battlefield 2 to the TIE Fighter series, and that gives us a lot of confidence in their ability to build a great game. Beyond that, they’re excited to get away from publishers and big companies dictating design, and want to use supporter feedback to build an experience that backers will love. That sounds like a winning combination.
Starfighter Inc. has an expected release of August 2016, and while you can support the effort for as little as $5, the Kickstarter price for a digital copy of the PC-only game will run you $25, unless you get in on the early bird special at $15.
