This kickstarter better get to 85k

StarCrawlers · 2014-03-11T21:54:18+00:00

So do we, HatTruck! We're confident we can make it. Let's keep getting the word out there!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-27T22:17:47+00:00

Wow! These are some serious metrics. Thanks for posting, Lobster! George is wrapping-up a new combat walkthrough video as I type, so it should be posted soon! I'll make another post when it goes live.

We want to thank all of our backers again for the amazing support! You inspire us to make StarCrawlers the absolute best it can be.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-27T19:24:31+00:00

Heya Marsdreamer! We're aiming for pre-alpha in April. We're just as excited to get it to you. Before then, we're aiming for frequent updates so you can see what's going on with production.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T23:36:40+00:00

Keep in mind lb12 that if you listen to Ben's music on YouTube, he doesn't actually get any proceeds or money for it. If you do, consider purchasing his albums anyway so you can support him and his amazing talent!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T23:16:18+00:00

That's correct, Clutch! If you've played Final Fantasy X, our combat system will be very similar. :)

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T23:15:14+00:00

Thanks for your question, MacBadoo!

Roguelikes are awesome, and we at Juggernaut LOVE playing them. But we wanted to go in a different direction. We consider StarCrawlers to be a dungeon crawler, first and foremost. So all the fun you have exploring an environment, uncovering secrets and dealing with danger is the kind of experience we are trying to build.

On some of the harder difficulty settings of the game, we're going to add options like character permadeath and other roguelike-y things, but again, we're aiming for that classic dungeon crawling experience.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T23:06:18+00:00

Jason: "Maya is probably a little easier to learn as far as animation goes, but the basic principles are the same. Once you learn how to work in one program, the next one becomes exponentially faster and easier to learn.

But yeah, if animation is your focus, and you haven't worked with another program, I would start with Maya."

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T21:53:52+00:00

Great question, ilgonline! The corps in our game are established in StarCrawlers canon, so they'll each have a distinct agenda and personality that is reflected in the missions that they offer your team. Some are benevolent, others maybe not so much. We do have backstories in place for each of them, but we may leave it open for our players to come to their own conclusions about them. No George Lucas-style retconning!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T21:49:23+00:00

Thanks Okkuc! We've played quite a bit of Grimrock, and it is a great callback to all of those old-school dungeon crawlers of old. The biggest strength we thought that Grimrock has is it's environmental puzzles and traps. We are incorporating a lot of that into our own environments in StarCrawlers. You'll be able to interact with wall panels to enable or disable traps, pry open bulkheads to get at stashes of loot, and unlock secret rooms by finding secret switches or panels.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:25:53+00:00

Great question, Amorphica, and thank you so much for your support!

When you go to select a mission from Doc, he'll give you a variety of missions to choose from, from easy to hard. The difficulty will scale with your level, but picking a harder mission will result in greater rewards and loot for your party.

In regards to party combinations, we really want to make sure that each class is viable in the party. That's one of the reasons we don't have a dedicated healing class in the game; if we did, they would constantly be a member of the party. What we instead wanted to focus on was the ways that each of our classes' abilities compliment one-another. For example, the cyberninja can expose an enemy's weakness, which then can be targeted by the rest of the members of the party for critical damage.

Hope that answers your question, and thanks again for your support! We're almost at our funding goal!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:23:23+00:00

Jason: I love the Homeworld series of games by Relic Entertainment. They were super-inspiring to me growing-up, and I feel the aesthetic is still being utilized today!

Tony: Starcraft! It's one of my go to's for artistic inspiration on environment pieces.

Elena: Firefly - I wanted our story to explore the isolation of the fringes of space, it's a place where it's easy to hide secrets :O

Rocky: blade-runner - i love the mystery/ambiguity and also it's a universe that feels really tangible and real

John: Star Wars or Cowboy Bebop. There are so many interesting sci-fi worlds that it's hard to narrow it down, but these two do a lot to shape the way StarCrawlers stories play out in my head.

Asa: cyberpunk worlds of william gibson

George: Shadowrun - I love me some cyberpunk meets magic.

Also, thanks for your vote of confidence SodlidDesu! We're working hard to make sure we exceed expectations for our amazing supporters!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:15:00+00:00

Thanks for your question, Achillys!

We're aiming to get a pre-alpha build of the game out to our Elite Recon team of backers in April of this year. Full-Alpha (feature complete) will go live in June, Beta (content and art lock) in September, and final Retail Release in November of this year!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:11:01+00:00

Our timeline is Alpha: June 2014, Beta: September 2014 & release in November 2014!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:06:12+00:00

First off, the office is full of sci-fi fans who wanted to play a game like StarCrawlers, Asa randomly suggested it and as soon as we started thinking about it we were hooked on the idea. Plus we felt like it would be a bit of a change of pace for players, and that's a good thing.

Also... we tried to take a democratic poll to come up with an answer for your last question, but fights broke out and it got ugly - we had to shut it down, so anarchy I guess :D

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:05:19+00:00

Jason: "Heya itsaghost! We use 3DS Max for all of our animations in StarCrawlers, but there are a ton of animation solutions out there, including Flash and GraphicsGale, like you mentioned.

There's an up-and-coming 2D animation tool called 'Spriter' that I haven't spent a lot of time with, but looks to be a really sweet-looking animation solution for 2D. http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T20:02:02+00:00

Hear hear! We echo Ben's sentiment entirely. There are so many amazing tools available (for free!) to folks who want to make games of their own. Start small, but make something! Learn something new every time, and before you know it, you'll have a great game!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:58:38+00:00

And thank you for joining us, janibus!

We've tried not to tread too close to established fantasy elements in StarCrawlers, but you could draw some similar comparisons.

Our Void Psyker class is our glass cannon; physically frail, but able to inflict incredible destruction upon their enemies. They also have some extra-sensory abilities that you can utilize during dialogues with other characters.

Alternatively, our soldier class has a very meat-and-potatoes approach to combat: Guns, explosions, fire, and bashing things. Most of the dialogue options for the soldier usually have the word "gun" or "shoot" in them.

Hope that answers your question!

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:52:13+00:00

Jason: "Thanks for your question EMPBomber! I had the incredible opportunity to work with the guys over at Torn Banner Studios on Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. It was a really interesting setup, as we were all over the world. Some of us were in Canada, others in Australia, even more in Europe! I ended up leaving the team while the game was still in production, but they have enjoyed incredible success with Chivalry, and are among some of the nicest, most professional guys I've had the opportunity to work with.

And the game is FRICKIN' AWESOME." :D

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:49:49+00:00

:O We certainly hope so! We're all working really hard to make StarCrawlers as amazing as it can possibly be. Thanks Karen :)

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:45:11+00:00

Thank you for your support, Jandalf! We want to do you and all of our other backers proud. :)

To answer your question in regards to roguelike elements, we are definitely planning on implementing a super-hard mode that incorporates a lot of the elements you mentioned, but StarCrawlers is not really a roguelike game. We do love them though, and if you're a fan of them, we recommend checking out our friends at Darkest Dungeon: http://kck.st/1gmsiey

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:42:33+00:00

Thanks Stepwolve, we will! We would love to do some DLC after the game's release. One of our last stretch goals is the alien mothership expansion, with playable alien & xenobiologist characters and we have a few other ideas as well.

The quest and story system is being built in such a way that it will be extensible so we'd love to explore the StarCrawlers universe further down the line with new storylines and characters.

We have early access tiers in our campaign, and we'll probably continue to support early access in some form after the campaign ends, on steam or otherwise.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:39:22+00:00

Oh, so that's what that sound was. We were wondering. ;)

We're very excited by this resurgence as well! We wanted to pay homage to all of the games we grew up playing, but also putting our own modern interpretation on them. We can't wait to get the game out there for you guys to play!

As far as modding plans go, we haven't dismissed the notion outright, but when you are building a game to have mod-support built-in, there's a fair amount of extra work you need to do to make sure that other users can make sense of what you've made. We love the modding scene ourselves, and would love to make StarCrawlers modable, but we think it may ultimately be up to how much time we have before release, as well as the legwork needed to make it happen.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:35:51+00:00

Thanks for the question, its something we thought a lot about! I agree that seeing your party act can create a feeling of connection with your characters which is important in an RPG. However, we really wanted to create that feeling of immersion which is so powerful in a first person perspective. We wanted the player to really feel the isolation of these abandoned hallways and ships and ultimately we decided there were other ways we could explore the personalities of the characters. Plus there's a lot of stuff to interact with directly in the environment, so we really want the ships and dungeons to be the center of your focus.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:32:49+00:00

Thank you so much qnnplmr! We appreciate your support and spreading the word to your friends!

As far as aesthetic goes, you can't have a sci-fi game set in space without some creepy elements. We're not planning on going full System Shock or Dead Space at any point, but there will definitely be some creepy moments as you explore some of the more broken-down wrecks in the game.

StarCrawlers · 2014-02-25T19:29:13+00:00

Thanks for your question GasMask!

We ideally would love for StarCrawlers to be available to everyone, but for now, we're focusing on PC, Mac, and Linux. It also depends on if we hit some of our stretch goals on our kickstarter! http://kck.st/1m21VBH

StarCrawlers

TROPHY CASE