Ran across this today:
StarCrawlers KickstarterHere is their blurb on what the game is about:
In StarCrawlers, you’ll lead a crew of Crawlers, each with their own unique skills and abilities. Together you’ll take on jobs to explore abandoned spacecraft, battle mighty enemies, and unravel corporate intrigue. Some key features of StarCrawlers:
Classic first person dungeon crawling in a detailed sci-fi universe
Narrative AI procedurally generates missions and dungeons with randomized encounters, traps, and enemies
Strategic RPG style combat featuring a time unit action system
An atmospheric soundtrack by Ben Prunty
Class ability customization and modification
Randomly generated and upgradeable loot
PC, Mac, and Linux support
Classic CRPG with a sci-fi flavor
In StarCrawlers you'll be navigating the halls of massive abandoned ships and sneaking through corporate facilities in a dynamic and interactive environment. Hack terminals to create shortcuts or find valuable data, disable or evade a variety of traps, grab as much salvage as you can carry, and keep your eyes peeled for hidden areas, loot and enemies.
Narrative AI
Randomized environments doesn't just mean slapping rooms together! The Narrative AI in StarCrawlers builds procedurally generated levels based on the story of the mission you're running. Whether on a rescue job in a pirate hulk or extracting data from a corp security station, your dungeon will be custom built to match. Lower the difficulty level for a casual dungeon dive or crank it to 11 and face fiendish traps, complex dungeons, and the toughest enemies.
Player-driven experience
The Narrative AI is also responsive: your choices of allies and how you resolve events alter not only the results of the mission, but how the story of your Crawler crew evolves.
Strategic RPG style combat
Combat in StarCrawlers has a traditional turn-based RPG style with a time unit action system. Unleash a series of light attacks with speedy, low cost actions, or strike a mighty blow with a heavy, high cost action. Smart choices about which abilities to use and when make the difference between victory and defeat.
Build a Relentless Crew of Crawlers
No Crawler can survive alone. You'll need to hire a crew, level them up, specialize their abilities, and customize their gear. Each Crawler class has their own set of combat abilities as well as special skills that provide advantages outside of combat - helping you to navigate your environment more effectively, and deal with traps, encounters, and threats. Assembling a crew that works well together is a focus of StarCrawlers!
I'm still undecided about backing this. It looks interesting, but I'm a little burned out on Kickstarters at the moment. It does mix some elements of old-school part-based RPGs that I like combined with some modern elements (like the narrative AI) that should mesh well together.
It does do a lot of the normal Kickstarter fluff, although at least some of the stretch goals look interesting. I'm not so sure about the Backer Bundle they're touting, since I've never been too fond of arbitrary in-game bonuses like that (other than pure cosmetic). But given that the game will have Perma-death and Ironman modes as options, maybe that's not so bad.
So, what do you guys think? Anyone here currently backing this?