Earlier this week we discovered Starship Simulator and got over-excited about the size of the ambition that this brand-new space sim had. It seems we were not alone. Within two days of the Kickstarter going live it has blasted past its funding target of £65,000 and is now boldly going towards hitherto unknown stretch goal territory.
Backing things on Kickstarter is always a gamble, but the fact Starship Simulator has more of a playable demo and experience already on Steam than Star Citizen ever had in its early days is a testament to the work of Dan and Claire Govier, the people behind the project at Fleetyard Games, and watching the funding and backer count climbing up even during the time it takes to write this article would suggest others agree.
Announcing hitting the target via an email to backers, the devs said:
“To say we’re completely blown away by your support is the biggest understatement of the century. A week ago we were wondering if we’d even make it to our goal, and yet here we are just 72 hours into the campaign, and you guys have completely smashed it already!
It’s just incredible, thank you all so much <3
We have so many exciting things planned for the game, so with 28 days left in the campaign let’s see if we can hit some of those stretch goals.
If we make it to £140k, then we’ll have the resources to go all-in on including native VR in the Early Access release. In addition to that, we’ll be bringing a character specialist on board to completely overhaul our current character system to give it some AAA polish.
If the stars align and the wind blows in the right direction we might even make it to £300k, at which point we can complete our main vision and bring Planetary Landings forward into Early Access as well. Unreal Engine 5 has some mind-blowing tools for generating procedural outdoor environments, and we really can’t wait to see how far we can push that technology.”
Stretch goals have been added all the way to £1 million which will include licensing “real” starships to include as DLC. Fancy flying around in the ship from your fave sci-fi? Best get backing.
Dan will be hosting a YouTube livestream on Monday the 25th, 20:00 UTC to answer questions on what’s next. VR though, that would be a very cool next step indeed. Watch this space.
