I’m looking forward to it because it’s the official sequel, from the original creators, over thirty years after the fact, to my favorite PC game of all time. Star Control 2 (Free on Steam but now renamed to Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters due to a bizarre copyright squabble) is an open-world (galaxy?) sci-fi adventure with brilliant and hilarious writing, endearing hand-drawn pixel art, and phenomenal music. There’s nothing quite like it. It was crafted with a deep love for gaming and I have no doubt the sequel is being treated with the same kinds of reverence.
EVERYBODY BACK THIS PROJECT! (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pistolshrimp/free-stars-children-of-infinity/description)
Just to add this: Star Control 2 is not only free (as in free beer), it is free (as in free speech). The open source project is hosted on SourceForge (yes, that still exists), and has a website that is worth checking out: https://sc2.sf.net/
Everyone who is so inclined to back this project, please do so.
However, I’d highly encourage you to do your due diligence first if you’ve never backed a crowd funded project before, and especially so if you’ve never backed a video game crowd funded project. Even more especially if you’d only back a project due to extra platforms “unlocked” through stretch goals.
There’s a lot that can go wrong in these kinds of endeavors (even when they’re started with the best of intentions), and it’s easy to end up feeling cheated by how it plays out (even in cases where something is delivered in the end).
Your points are totally valid, but I will share my reasons for having faith in this particular project:
- The creators have been delivering projects for about 40 years now (not Kickstarter, but mostly as Toys for Bob).
- The project has progressed significantly already - prototypes have been built and assets have been created. It’s not just a speculative project.
- The project is of a manageable scope. It’s not planning to revolutionize anything or deliver innovative technology. It’s well-trodden ground, technically speaking.
I will admit that there’s risk in it being a small team chasing nostalgia, so even if it does deliver something, the quality may not be what we all hope it could be. But I have enough faith in the team that it can’t be worse than Star Control 3.
Yep, me too. Played it as a teenager in the late 90s. I already backed it as well!
I could probably Name That Tune for 90% of the songs even to this day.
Done and done! Big SC2 fan. Now I’m just waiting on my swag :)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Free Stars: Children of Infinity, the sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters (Star Control 2) is now confirmed to be supporting Linux (and macOS).
The Kickstarter campaign has only been up for just over a day and it’s already managed to pull in over $240,000 in funding.
This means the $220,000 stretch goal for Linux and macOS support has been achieved as confirmed by the developer.
Since it also passed $240K, it will also now see a DRM-free PC release as well so that’s double good news.
It’s not confirmed what DRM-free stores they will put it on but their announcement mentioned possibilities being itch.io and GOG.
The campaign still has a whole 29 days to go with extra stretch goals including more languages, local co-op, console ports, English voice over and if they somehow hit $4.4 million they will open source it all.
The original article contains 153 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 7%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Neat. Reminds me of Space Pirates and Zombies.
