The founders of Toys For Bob are making a sequel to their 1992 open world space game and it’s just ended its crowdfunding campaign over 600% past its funding goal.
Free Stars: Children of Infinity is a sequel to Star Control 2, the classic game in which you captain a ship across the galaxy, shoot at enemies from a top-down perspective, and talk to funky aliens with a branching dialog tree allowing you to change your relationships with them. You might mistake that description for Mass Effect at a squint, and you’d be forgiven, because Star Control actually inspired a lot of what that classic trilogy went on to do.
Former BioWare veteran Mike Laidlaw previously talked about how Star Control 2’s “inspiration is all over the Mass Effect series,” in an interview with Hardcore Gaming 101. “Rich stories, featuring a human who finds themselves thrust into a galactic conflict against dire, overwhelming foes bent on universal extinction is a great common theme. And of course we can’t forget the Mako, which was a direct nod to the lander gameplay of Star Control II.”
Seeing a series with that kind of impact return with its original creator in tow was enough to draw around 6,785 backers to the upcoming game’s Kickstarter campaign, which smashed past its initial $100,000 funding goal in just three hours and has since raised over $680,000.
Backers also unlocked several stretch goals that promise to add interior gameplay, more ships, melee, and additional languages to the game, as well as console ports in the future. The only stretch goal left unmet was a $4.4 million target to make the game completely open source, which is actually what happened to Star Control 2 back in the day, and as our Dustin Bailey explained, that’s also what led to a legal dispute between trademark owner Accolade and developers Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford – hence, why this crowdfunded sequel isn’t called Star Control: [insert space-themedsubtitle].
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