Orion Back on Kickstarter for Fourth Time

Fourth time’s a charm, right? That’s what developer David Prassel is hoping after launching yet another Kickstarter campaign for his game, ORION. The first campaign was a success, titled Orion: Prelude, raising $17,686 way back in July 2011. The game was eventually finished and released on Steam, but Prassell also made two other attempts to get other Orion games in the franchise funded with no success.

This isn’t to be confused with Orion, the visual novel nor Project Orion Raven Sword Industries. It’s not related to Orion Trail by Schell Games or Orion’s Odyssey by BigRye. Come to think of it, its’ not related to any of the other countless games on Kickstarter going under the name of Orion either, this is a brand new(ish) game.

A Dark History

If the name Prassel rings any bells (or indeed Orion), it’s because his game was actually pulled for Steam after a copyright claim by Activision. In June 2016, Activision claimed that another of Prassel’s many Orion games featured stolen assets from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Prassel said the claims weren’t true, but several Reddit detectives uncovered multiple assets in the game that bear a striking resemblance to assets in both Call of Duty games.

When Polygon contacted Prassel about these similarities, he claimed that there was only one thing he noticed that looked similar, one of the gun’s iron sights. He said that it wasn’t enough to warrant a take down, and stated that the take down claim was a “malicious act.”

Trying to Move Forward

As you could have guessed, the Kickstarter page for ORION makes no mention of the copyright claims against the previous game. Instead, it mostly talks about the work that has already gone into the game, with Prassel stating he spent 20 years working on the game, and that he’s proud of the work that’s went into its first year live on Steam.

ORION is a first person MMO shooter with dinosaurs. It features countless weapons, a leveling system, and starship battles. The game even boast that you can switch between not only first and third person at any time, but also an top-down camera similar to a twin stick shooter.

You have to respect the level of love that Prassel and his team have been putting into the game. They’ve been at working for years trying to make the best possible game they can and have tried many times on Kickstarter to make the game better.

But truth be told, I’m not sure if it’s worth all that. On the surface it looks like a standard MMO FPS. The lack of any info regarding the Activision copyright claim is worrying. You can check out the massive Kickstarter page for yourself, but Prassel is asking for $40,000 to continue development of the game.