Stellar Tactics Crashes on Kickstarter Takeoff

I’ve been playing games like Dragon Age and Diablo my whole life, and I sure love me some isometric RPG. Stellar Tactics looks to be in the same vein of those great games, albeit rooted in the sci-fi universe. Developed by Maverick Games, it features party and turn-based combat, which alternates with strategic action-based space combat. Obviously, you don’t get any kind of real vehicle-based gameplay in classic RPGs like Dragon Age and Diablo, so the space combat is definitely a welcome twist to the genre.

It’s got your usual RPG features: XP, unlocks, an open world, loot, crafting systems and the like. From what little I’ve seen of the gameplay on Youtube everything seems well put-together, with a look that is highly reminiscent of cancelled MMORPG Face of Mankind. On video, the turn-based combat seems rather slow, but I’ll be interested to see how it feels and plays in a demo. Speaking of which, Stellar Tactics has been in development for six years—the main developer funded and worked on the project mostly on his own, with the help of a “few artists, [his] wife and daughter”—so I’d really like to see a demo released at some point.

One thing I do not like at all is the listing of DLCs in the Kickstarter overview. Two DLCs, in fact. It’s in-fact one of my biggest pet peeves; I’d much rather see the DLCs listed as stretch goals, rather than as high-tier backer rewards. I’m firmly against the notion of listing DLCs before an alpha has even been released—especially on Kickstarter—it just seems like a plain ol’ naughty cash grab to me.

All of that may be moot at this point though.  Less than a week after the Stellar Tactics Kickstarter was launched it was cancelled.  In that time $5,415 was raised, which, while not insignificant, is hardly sufficient momentum to reach its $67,000 goal.  Will we see Stellar Tactics again?  According to the developer you should plan on it; but whether or not it’ll be on Kickstarter is unknown at this point.