Blackspace plays in real-time and has strategy elements, but it’s not your typical RTS game. It’s a lot about defending your base, but it’s not a tower-defense game either. Blackspace is, what their makers call it: “a defensive action / strategy game that takes place in the not too distant future, when asteroid mining has become common [and you need to] defend yourself from incoming enemies who loot and destroy.” ~PixelFoundry
I have to confess that I was not terribly excited about this game at first sight. Albeit the great looking graphics, the gameplay and goals were quite unclear to me at first. But, I changed my mind after watching the video and reading through the details more carefully. It’s like nothing you have ever seen before in sci-fi gaming. It proposes to combine gorgeously realistic graphics, a sense of wonder with elements of discovery and an extensive use of physics, all in a fully destructible space environment.
Gameplay consists in maneuvering a space vehicle, called a Lander, in order to establish a mining base on an Asteroid, mine the surrounding area and plant defenses against invaders. In time you’ll be able to upgrade your vehicle and your base, build more defenses, whatever suits you. But while this all sounds nice I still have some trouble understanding the objective of the game. At least I don’t think that was made clear. Is there a campaign? Is this a completely sand-box experience?
They say to have a solid base set. “This isn’t just an idea or a concept. This is a project well on its way to completion. We have been working on Blackspace full-time for ~9 months.”
About why the kickstarter the devs reply: “We came to a fork in our game dev path. Since we started this project, the game has changed, and new possibilities have opened up from a design perspective. We had to choose between following the game design where it would lead, or to cut it short and finish a smaller game”. They are about 31% of their funding goal (350K) with 14 days to go.
The devs targeted the initial release for the PC, however they leave the door open to support Mac, Linux and consoles in the future. But they say that they first need the PC release to be a success.
You can find all the information on Blackspace on the kickstarter page and on the official website.
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The game actually looks amazing, I hope it reaches it lofty goal. The asteroids hitting the buildings and deforming the terrain is cool looking.
However it is pretty far off from $350,000.
Yes, pretty cool stuff, but, I have some difficulty understanding what he game’s objective may be. I mean, how do you win?
The devs read this piece and replied to me saying that some of the questions I raised about the gameplay (I guess the point about an hypothetical campaign/sand-box and objectives) will be answered in a Kickstarter update they are planning for the next couple of days. Maybe by then it will be clear what the game’s goals are, and the all point.
Because if there’s no point, and all the game has to offer (although a lot, I don’t doubt that) is a gorgeous mining experience in a realistic outer space environment, but without objectives or victory conditions, then this would be more a simulation kind of gameplay than strategy to me.
But, I’m not saying there aren’t objectives in the game. I don’t doubt that the devs have something in mind. I’m just saying that is was not clear what those objectives may be by reading the Kickstarter page. I mean, is this a single-player only experience? Will there be a campaign? Is the game sand-box? And if so, are there any goals that need to be achieved or not?
I guess this is what happens when we are sailing on uncharted waters :) As the game seems so unique one can’t help wonder how exactly the gameplay will be like.
It looks like a tower defense game w/ some rts elements + arcade.
Looks nice!
One note : there’s a type in the last row (“backspace”) above ;)
There’s a typo** in my comment as well, lol.
Fixed! Thanks :)
It looks an amazing game but one I have no interest in actaully playing.
looks maybe abit like one of my old favorites k240 if anyone remembers that far back