“Don’t call it Minecraft.”  That’s been one of the themes during the Kickstarter campaign for the blocky voxel RPG Planets³ from Cubical Drift.  The other has been that despite an extremely aggressive $250,000 funding goal and a slow start the team wasn’t going to give up; and it looks like it’s going to pay off.  With just under 3 days left in its Kickstarter campaign Planets³ is just $12,000 shy of success.  We recently had an opportunity to chat with Cubical Drift CEO Michel Thomazeau about the Planets³, Minecraft, and the rollercoaster that is a high-dollar Kickstarter campaign.

Cliqist : Can you start us off by telling me a little about yourself?

Michel Thomazeau : We are a small team. The co-founders of the company are 3 old friends that met at their engineer school 13 years ago.

We surrounded ourselves with competent and truly motivated people from different horizons (creative artists, graphics and musician) to develop the game of our dreams.

My name is Michel Thomazeau, and I am the project director of Planets³ and the CEO of the Cubical Drift Company. I am 32 years old, and have a 9 years background in CAD software development at Realviz first and then at Autodesk.

Cliqist : I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but; another Minecraft clone?  Why bother?  Why doesn’t everyone just stick to Minecraft and leave it at that?

Michel Thomazeau : Planets³ is all about bringing a story over a voxel world. We are not creating “another Minecraft”, we are creating a RPG (“another RPG” if you want!).

The multiple block shapes allow real diversity of creation. As you can see in the concept art, it is really something else.

As a RPG, you will have a complete story from the start of the game to the end of the story. There will be NPCs, with their own stories, which will follow you during all your adventure, helping you to progress. There will be a simple but deep craft system. Construction will even take part in the story.

And finally: the story will bring players to space!

Cliqist : It was risky to start such a large Kickstarter campaign with so little gameplay to show out of the gate.  Were you nervous?

Michel Thomazeau : Absolutely, and we are still nervous. We decided to start the Kickstarter with “so little gameplay” because of many reasons. Lot of projects go to Kickstarter with a product in alpha stage, not us, we are presenting a concept (with a technical prototype) and we think that because our ideas are good and the team competent, we can be successful.

Cliqist : The Planets³ campaign started slowly, but then several days into the campaign it exploded; an unusual phenomenon.  What happened?

Michel Thomazeau : Our main problem is visibility, and some days ago 2 major video game websites wrote an article about us.

Cliqist : You’re promising nothing less than the universe with Planets³, did you ever consider scaling it back to give people a taste of the game and play it a little safer?

Michel Thomazeau : We do not want to do that, Planets³ will bring players to travel from planets to planets, it is the very “essence” of our game. We already “scale back” to a first solar system for the first opus Race to Space, we will not scale back more.

Cliqist : I have to admit something.  I’ve never enjoyed Minecraft.  Why should I back Planets³?

Michel Thomazeau : Because Planets³ is not a sandbox game but a RPG.

Of course if you don’t enjoy RPG, Planets³ is not for you either!

Cliqist : Any final words for anyone else that might be on the fence about backing Planets³?

Michel Thomazeau : Support us on Kickstarter, together we will make a great game.

Cliqist : Can you close us out with a Planets³ inspired haiku?

Michel Thomazeau : I asked the team for this one, as I am not very comfortable with words. It’s from Lihwem our musician:

With dreams big enough

The tadpole become a frog

Space will soon be our

To learn more about Planets³ be sure to check out its Kickstarter page, there’s less than three days until the deadline, and plenty of room for more backers; if you’re so inclined.

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