Space Rogue Is FTL x Space Rangers x Retro-Futurism

Space Rogue! It's not a roguelike but an "RTS game about the infinite universe" with a golden age sci-fi aesthetic, and its developers are "trying to combine the crew management of FTL: Faster Than Light with space exploration of Space Rangers". The trailer below does a poor job of communicating either - it incorrectly makes it look like you control a single person boarding corvette-like spaceships - but it does a good job of selling the fabulous art style.

The game's website offers further clarifying and contradicting information to what you'd likely infer from the trailer. Mainly, that it's set in a procedurally generated universe, that it has space battles, the aforementioned ship management, plus the ability to land on planets. It's being made by Red Beat, a small Ukrainian studio who were unknown to me till now but previously made tower defense game Prime World: Defenders. Space Rogue is their first independent project.

Refreshingly, it's not asking for any crowdfunding money to aid in development - at least not yet. The game has been under production since at least the start of the year, though the trailer seems to contain 'target render'-style footage and at least some of the screenshots on the Space Rogue website seem to have been drawn over in Photoshop. That matters less when it's simply an old-fashioned game announcement, and not one which wants your money.

It matters less still when one of the released images is as fun as this poster:

Which is almost as good as the cover image for the last game called Space Rogue, a game designed by the man who would found Looking Glass. There's also more of this type of lovely retro sci-fi art on the development team's 'inspirational art' Pinterest.