StarForge Falls Out Of Sky, Lands On IndieGoGo


We’ve mentioned the astonishingly ambitious sci-fi combat and building game StarForge before, but now it requires a special nod, because the team behind it are trying to raise some money. Based on the extraordinary range of things they’ve already achieved – take a look at the video below for an illustration of that – I would say these are gents who deserve an even break. Any development team that tries to sell its crowd-sourcing efforts with a video of a multi-blade chainsaw fight on a spacecraft floating above a planet, ending with one of the characters plunging into the clouds below, gets my vote. You can even register on their site to download a WIP alpha build of the game, and see how they are getting on.

In the meantime, watch.

22 Comments

  1. 31/10/2012 at 14:17 Smion says:

    Getting yourself tied to a car and then being thrown off a cliff is NOT how you do Parkour. Please don’t try this in real life!

    • 01/11/2012 at 02:05 I want to stab you to death and play around with your blood. says:

      Unless you want to, in which case you should totally do it and have your friends get it on video!

  2. 31/10/2012 at 14:25 Ravenholme says:

    Strong sense of Tresspasser (Or whatever that weird Dinosaur game with the boobie tattoo health gauge was) from the glitchy physics based movement.

    So endearing.

    • 31/10/2012 at 14:49 magicwalnuts says:

      That’s cause they both have procedurally generated animations. None of the animations are premade. It’s a relatively rare technique, but I can see why indie developers are attracted to it because it means they don’t have to spend the money to hire an animator.

      • 31/10/2012 at 15:22 Ravenholme says:

        Yep, and I love it. It looks wonky as hell but it’s also so strangely cool.

  3. Premium User Badge

    31/10/2012 at 14:32 Qazinsky says:

    Me, I got a Borderlands meets Minecraft feel from this. It looks very interesting, hopefully it delivers.

  4. 31/10/2012 at 14:32 groovychainsaw says:

    Well, they get my vote. I’d like to think I’m rewarding reckless ambition which we don’t see often from the big games, even if I’m not sure any of this is really going to cohere into a ‘game’, I think I’ll have fun just messing around with the alpha :-).
    P.S. – As far as I can tell, you’ll get access to the Alpha right away if the thing gets funded, which has got to be worth a look at?

    • 31/10/2012 at 14:37 MrLebanon says:

      i believe how it works, is anyone can download the WIP for free, but are limitted to a demo map

      The WIP uses your log in, so once purchased and they process it they tie your login to your indiegogo and give yo u access to the full game.

      E.G the demo is the full alpha minus all the features, contribute to indiegogo and you get all the features available

      I backed yesterday, waiting for my account to be upgraded

    • 31/10/2012 at 16:49 DarkFenix says:

      Thrown some money at them too, I honestly don’t really care whether or not it coheres into a ‘game’ as such, it looks like they’re making a fantastic box of toys and I want to play with those toys.

    • 31/10/2012 at 17:34 Phantoon says:

      Yeah, no, the ambition of this game is completely insane. I enjoyed one of their earliest alphas, in which it was just a small patch of green ground at night, with two HUGE trees with bizarre glowing bits at the top. The structural integrity thing seems like something no one has done yet, and gets me even further excited.

    • 31/10/2012 at 22:17 mwoody says:

      So I’ve backed it at the two copy level. How do I and my friend play the non-demo game? Do we make accounts and then…?

      I wish they were more descriptive on the page.

  5. 31/10/2012 at 14:37 Hunchback says:

    Multibladed chainsaw is… wtfbbq! This beats even chansaw-machinegun!!11one

  6. 31/10/2012 at 14:47 jatan says:

    this looks fun and fantastic in its aims- what i really love is the fact that we can go play now… gone is the frustration of reading all the hype (in zapp 64 )and then not getting to get to play if for two years

  7. 31/10/2012 at 14:52 Moonracer says:

    The game was already looking pretty good a couple months back but it looks like they are expanding in quite a few directions. If they pull it off this should be a very entertaining playground.

    I’m liking the addition of the stress gauge on buildings, so they have to be somewhat architecturally sound. If weapons can be used to damage buildings that could add a nice Red Faction Guerrilla vibe lacking in this kind of game.

  8. 31/10/2012 at 14:54 Rusky says:

    Damn, if they manage to deliver on even half of what I’m already thinking this game’ll entail, this’ll be an amazing game.
    Already threw some money at them, hoping for the best :)

  9. 31/10/2012 at 15:45 InternetBatman says:

    I’m glad they’re using a fixed funding campaign. It looks like they should reach their target anyways.

  10. 31/10/2012 at 19:53 Greggh says:

    This is going to be the first game that I help “crowdfund”.
    Seriously, this game EARNED my money already (in alpha, no less).

    • 31/10/2012 at 20:29 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:

      I concur. The alpha was worth 18.3 breathlessly-narrated trailers in its convincing power.

  11. 01/11/2012 at 14:40 YourMessageHere says:

    I like what this wants to be; I played, I don’t know, a demo or pre-alpha or something a while back and it was good fun and beautifully promising.

    Unfortunately it was also Unity engine, which inevitably meant it ran like a tranquilised slug and crashed about every half an hour at best. Can anyone comment on the current state of it relative to this?

    EDIT: ah sod it, I gave them $15 anyway.

  12. 01/11/2012 at 16:20 Wut The Melon says:

    Now, come on, if three guys working from an apartment are as ambitious as this, why, if Ubisoft puts millions of dollars and 100s of people on AC3, can’t they do anything remotely close to this? If this is a $75 000 project, why is it so much bigger than your average $ 10 million game?

    This industry is odd.

  13. 02/11/2012 at 14:35 Machinations says:

    THIS LOOKS AMAZING

    TAKE MY MONEY NOW

  14. 02/11/2012 at 20:50 egg-zoo-bear-ant will e 91 says:

    I intend to give all money. However they are clearly not dedicated. It’s like giving your money to the first live aid- it mostly went to corrupt rich governments. The chairs man. That is an expensive chair. I want my developers living as cheaply as possible. No furniture. Make their own electricity through a generator and a running machine. And if he loved sofa forts, why is his interior decor so poor. Fuck these guys.

    (internet sarcasm)

    Incredible. Is the planet totally 1:1 scale earth size? How far can you fly out into space? Fuel? Can you get hungry and cold? I should probably just look this up. Wish it wasn’t just starship troopers AGAIN story wise though. I want to get involved. Shouldn’t mining look more, well miney? With earth spewing/compacting effects and not just the quantum tunneling look. Damn. I wonder about NPC RPG parody towns. Little weird creatures. That got pretty procedural with Din’s Curse- you’d get to a point where you could push on for the quest but your town is being invaded- that threat is real (Shame game was too ugly for me to spend any time with).

    How moddable will it be? Hope they learnt the lesson of infiniminer source code terror- but also minecraft could do them better while still keeping it centralized enough to move forward, I think.

    If they keep focus, get something with the core excitements and freedoms of it out soon, like early minecraft this should be huge fast. Generate word of mouth anecdotes. And I hope the procedural generation isn’t somewhow dull, which it is in cases. Proof will be in the pudding. Which I will eat big.

    Edit: And are there other planets? Gas Giants? Space would have to be partitioned. And I hope the crafting chains up, instead of sort of getting to a point and then requiring your own creativity, because you’ve done anything that’s of any real help already. A huge crafting bench, and the ability to make big drills, and way better carting, self laying like in famous Wallace and Gromit. Needs to keep escelating. Not just throwing increasing annoying amounts of zombies at you. And physics I hope get to look Red Factiony, but with landslides too. If this scales to run well on weak computers, aha, big published Triple A will look silly.

    2nd edit: Sorry for banging on so much. I have froth for this.