In our long-term pursuit to Indie developers, we at Mana Pool were pleased to see that Only Human Studios (Helena the 3rd) are working on their next project. As many will know, funding is the biggest problem with any Indie game development, so they have launched a Kickstarter campaign to get things kick-started. You can read his news snippet on the launch below.
Imagine you’re gripped in the heat of a space dogfight, and your side is losing. In the distance, you notice a large asteroid which everyone else has been too distracted to explore. With nothing to lose, you leave the battlezone to check it out. Hidden behind the rock is a derelict battle cruiser which you decide to dock on and explore. The ship is overrun with some kind of alien infestation, but you dispatch of the insect like creatures and quickly find the bridge. After powering up the ship, you find that it’s powerful weapons are still in tact, and that it just might be enough to turn the battle…
Or perhaps you find yourself in a different battle between two factions fighting over control of a pirate base. You’re able to get there first and land in one of the docking areas. You quickly exit your ship and run to the nearest set of turret pods. From there you’re able to effortlessly destroy any enemies in the vicinity.
Gameplay like that is what we’re trying to capture in Ensign 1. We’d like it to be an immersive multiplayer space combat game that allows players to leave their ships and explore, even pilot much larger space cruisers. Ensign 1 will be available for Windows and Linux.
Our Team
As ambitious as the project is, creating my own 3D game engines from scratch is what I excel at, and something that I have years of hobby experience in. The project is still very early in development, with the main features of the game engine still being written. It is being co-created with one other core team member (Kevin Pears of gamingonlinux.com), who is an extremely talented 3D artist and level designer.
How Donations Will Be Used
The money here will be used to help us get the game to a point where it could be sold in alpha-funding. We’ll need to create a few single player missions progressing from destroying a few enemy fighters to invading an alien space cruiser. We’ll also be working on providing a couple of multiplayer arenas.
We’re hoping after that we will be able to ourselves from there. Any help you can provide us with to get us there is greatly appreciated!