Sometimes, people bring projects to Kickstarter which are just at the very first planning stages. As cool as their concepts might be, it’s hard to determine how the actual final product will fare! Sol Trader is different. Right off the bat developer Chris Parsons lets everyone know he has actually been working on this game for 3 years in his spare time. As of right now, this unique space title is already in alpha, but requires Kickstarter backers to fund £20,000 (about $30,470) to provide him the time required to finish this game in 2015.
What makes Sol Trader different from the multitude of other space exploration games out there? First, it’s a sense of history. In many games when you begin it feels that the entire “world” begins with you. Alliances are all brand new as are enemies. However, here you first start off by making a few choices to setup the history of space. 200 years will all go by before you even start to play. Once you jump in you’ll have to deal with the repercussions of events your ancestors instigated.
Gameplay takes a page out of the classic arcade title Asteroids. From video shared so far it appears that you pilot your ship from a top-down perspective and shoot at enemy ships as they approach. The ships are effectively the “asteroids” although it remains to be seen what tweaks might come to the formula. Sol Trader is pegged for release on Windows and Mac by this summer. There is no Steam Greenlight page available yet but expect to see one go live soon.
Track the progress of the Sol Trader Kickstarter on our Campaign Calendar.
Thanks for the article! I’m the developer, and happy to answer any questions that people have.
One quick clarification: there aren’t any asteroids yet, but I do plan to implement real asteroids (as in, rocks) into the game as part of getting it completed this year.
Chris