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[SharpKris]

Just found this thingy on KS http://kck.st/QEVxlD
think it'll make for an amazing "Twitch plays x"

The Universim is a next generation Planet Management God Game
in development by Crytivo Games and designed by Alex Koshelkov

Game features

- Evolving universe simulator

- Dynamic events/disasters

- Advanced tech tree through exploration and colonization of new planets

- Falling objects that could lead to !FUN!

- Encounter unique, dynamically generated planets with varying temperatures, conditions, environments, atmospheres, and precious resources.

- Observe the changing of seasons and prepare your civilization for the coming of winter. Some winters can last for many months and chill your population to the bone. Be prepared!

- Customize your civilization by constructing special buildings and give your space shuttles a new lick of paint to reflect your personality

- Hilarity ensues as the "News system" tells you of dick shaped aliens invading your planet

- Feature lists the don't make sense!

[Levi]

Mmm.  I appreciate it when they put "No Microtransactions or Paid DLC's" in nice big letters.   

[EuchreJack]

Hm, game ending in "Sim" that seems to combine a ton of EA properties.

....Yeah, expect EA games to grab whatever money this game makes in the obvious lawsuit.

[BigD145]

The fact they're only asking $320k does not speak highly about the project. San Diego is not a cheap place to live. If it's just one guy then it's not going very far any time soon. There's a "join our team" button on the main website and "I can work unpaid until we will launch project" option if you desire to work for the studio.

[Sappho]

This looks pretty cool.

No, there cannot be a lawsuit. Trust me, I was a legal secretary for 7 years. EA does not have a copyright on the word Sim or god games. They can only claim specific game titles as their property, not common abbreviations of words. And those gameplay elements can be found all over the place. That's like saying EA can sue MicroProse or Firaxis for the Civilization games, or that Nintendo can sue every developer who releases a puzzle game with falling blocks. It's nonsense. They could only sue if they could prove the developer is stealing their work or assets for profit, cloning one of their games and altering it only minimally. This isn't a ripoff, it's an original game with similar features to some EA games. Nothing illegal about that.

The real question is whether they can pull it off the way they want to. If so, it will be excellent. But it sounds like a system that will be difficult to balance and will certainly require a lot of work. They're giving themselves a year and a half to deliver the beta, which might be a tough goal to meet given the depth and complexity they promise. Still, if they manage it, this could be really fantastic.

[Tilla]

This looks pretty cool.

No, there cannot be a lawsuit. Trust me, I was a legal secretary for 7 years. EA does not have a copyright on the word Sim or god games. They can only claim specific game titles as their property, not common abbreviations of words. And those gameplay elements can be found all over the place. That's like saying EA can sue MicroProse or Firaxis for the Civilization games, or that Nintendo can sue every developer who releases a puzzle game with falling blocks. It's nonsense. They could only sue if they could prove the developer is stealing their work or assets for profit, cloning one of their games and altering it only minimally. This isn't a ripoff, it's an original game with similar features to some EA games. Nothing illegal about that.

The real question is whether they can pull it off the way they want to. If so, it will be excellent. But it sounds like a system that will be difficult to balance and will certainly require a lot of work. They're giving themselves a year and a half to deliver the beta, which might be a tough goal to meet given the depth and complexity they promise. Still, if they manage it, this could be really fantastic.

A year and a half is pretty short yes, but they're also reasonably far into development already from my understanding - they had in-game footage in the video.

[a1s]

This is going to be Spore all over again. I'm calling it now.

[Retropunch]

A year and a half is pretty short yes, but they're also reasonably far into development already from my understanding - they had in-game footage in the video.

I always think game videos are a bit of a red herring - I've known of lots of projects which have had pretty advanced videos but that's literally the ONLY stuff they have.

I am very excited by this though, and I have high hopes for it. Getting close to the funding deadline and I've already donated a lot to other projects unfortunately. I really hope they make it though!

[Vendayn]

This is going to be Spore all over again. I'm calling it now.

Most excitement for a game: Spore
Most disappointed: Spore

Can never get excited for a game after that, till its released. Well...except Bethesda games and only cause since morrowind not one disappointment. At least for me.

[10ebbor10]

It is probably a good idea to prepare new variants of antibiotics in advance to counter future viral outbreaks

It's rare to see so much misconceptions about medicinal science in a single sentence.

Seems like a nice game though.

Edit: Found quite a few other scientific errors over the kickstarter page and in other related information, so it seems like they're not going to bother doing the research.

[Xazo-Tak]

Judging from the trailer, it looks like this game will have nigh-impossible as a non-artificial difficulty.

[Neonivek]

Sometimes you want variants... but in general it is not for the reasons they listed (it is because you don't want to use ultra-powerful antibiotics on the flu)

[Vendayn]

Eh. Spore's kind of made my expectations of games like this go from 'AMAZING!' to 'It'll probably be dumbed down and not as good as I thought'

Yup. Sadly the same for me pretty much.

[SharpKris]

seeing as how they intend to make customization the main focus of the game i can understand their fallacy in subjects of scientific accuracy, never the less, the game seems to be abundant with options and is intended to be much more of a story focused game then an accurate simulation of civilizations progressing through the ages of history.

pointing that this or that isn't scientifically accurate is a fallacy by itself as when it comes to story telling i would let pigs be mankinds saviors from the evil mushroom empires tyranny         

[BigD145]

http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-universim/news/the-universim-in-game-object-editor  Today we have some more great news to share with you! Object editors are awesome, and judging by all of your comments and feedback we can all agree that The Universim absolutely needs one.

Options are a stretch goal, namely the in-game editor. But they changed their minds and now dinosaurs are the stretch goal. Talk about equivalent exchange... It's practically DLC. Pay extra and you get it. The only difference is that everyone has to pay extra if they want to reach the stretch goal... oh wait. Everyone does pay extra for DLC. Stretch goals just start with the cutbacks and attempt to work their way up. If the Kickstarter reaches the minimum this will be a stripped down skeleton and the studio will ride the cash into the next project, which every backer will have to pay for all over again. I expect minigames for things like leaving the planet. Press 3 buttons in sequence to make the ship go faster. There's a lot of concept going on here and I'm getting vibes of Star Command all over again. I would like to be wrong.