Little Big Universe: Limit Theory Hits Funding Goal
Oh, this is good news. This is very, very good news. While big names like Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous are bringing back space games with budgets that eclipse the number of stars in the sky and - in the latter's case - startling amounts of vagueness, Limit Theory's the exceedingly impressive product of one very dedicated guy. Unlike the aforementioned genre titans, Limit Theory basically came out of nowhere, but with plenty of gameplay footage and a highly detailed Kickstarter page. And now it's reached its semi-modest (in the grand scheme of things) $50,000 goal in just under one week, because there is justice in the universe after all. To celebrate, creator Josh Parnell's synthesized up some new gameplay footage using the space-age techno-magic of some basic video capture software and YouTube.
Apparently, it's been in development for roughly three months, and that's already resulted in a custom, fully procedural game engine - which makes the game potentially limitless while, somewhat ironically, potentially limiting its variety quite a bit. Obviously, though, it remains to be seen whether or not that will actually be an issue.
In the meantime, Parnell's goals for the project are madly ambitious. He's hoping to keep things manageable by focusing exclusively on single-player, but beyond that, he's still shooting for infinite living, breathing universes, any playable role you can imagine (explorer, pirate, merchant, miner, etc, etc, etc), and a release date within our frail, decidedly non-infinite lifetimes. Specifically, he's got his eyes on early 2014, with something playable (for backers, anyway) headed our way early next year.
What's here so far looks quite nice, though, so Parnell's not just slapping together his ship with duct-tape, hot air, and good faith. (And that's good, too, because those components would, at best, make a hot air balloon. A really, really bad one.) Hooray, though: a well put-together Kickstarter succeeded. Hopefully that's a sign of good things to come, but I'm not so sure. These things are starting to be met with an attitude of fatigue - and rightly so, in many cases. But where do the bad eggs leave a funding model that, under the right circumstances, can do some serious good? Are you getting tired of crowdfunding? What does it take to convince you to chip in on a project these days?
[Jim's note: watch out for an interview with Josh later this week.]