In Kickstarter Game of the Week, our staff samples Kickstarter’s finest avocados and brings you the freshest and ripest of the bunch.
This week’s tasty morsel is an ambitious sci-fi exploration game called Transmission, and if you’ve watched our video about the game’s campaign, you already know that I’m a little bit in love with this one.
Speaking in broad terms, I’m sick of exploration-survival games, but Transmission manages to bring something truly worthwhile to the table. Could it be the game’s gorgeous hand-painted environments, impactful combat, and contemplative soundtrack? Yeah, probably. But from what we’ve seen on the campaign’s Kickstarter page, Transmission offers that and a whole lot more.
Transmission deftly avoids the common survival game pitfalls by ditching procedural generation for thoughtful design, and replaces the typical “make your own fun” sandbox mindset with a fleshed-out story, complete with cutscenes that look like a Pixar adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. To sell the distant alien world feel, combat is unforgiving and open-ended, sitting somewhere between Hyper Light Drifter and Bastion.
Deep down in my soul, I think you’d be missing out if you didn’t take a look at this game’s campaign on Kickstarter. The devs at Paper Unicorn have realistic goals, a well thought-out battle plan, and plenty of art, animation, and gameplay to show off. They’ve clearly put the work into developing an original and refreshing idea, and one that will probably only see the light of day with the help of backers. The campaign doesn’t have much time left, so go check it out, peruse the reward tiers, and share it with a friend.
