Does anyone remember the good old days when space flight sims were decent and plentiful? TIE Fighter was one of the first games I ever owned on floppy disk and allowed me to fall in love with this genre of gaming (as well as invert my mouse in FPS games). From there I’ve played many of the classics from Frontier Elite II to Tachyon: The Fringe. It seems to me the past few years have seen a complete lack of any decent efforts with the exception of the X series of games made by Egosoft. Are space sims just not cool anymore? Well it seems others out there feel the same way and want to stage a return to those good old days with a little PC-exclusive title called Strike Suit Zero.
The game is being developed by Born Ready Games, a UK developer based in Guildford and they just created a Kickstarter page not to start funding for the game, but to help finish it off, iron out the bugs and give it a good polish before release. The game has been in development for over two years but the devs are saying they just can’t afford to keep it in development long enough to finish it properly which is why they’ve turned to crowd sourced funding. After only two days of Kickstarter funding, they’re already well on their way to reaching their goal of $100,000.
The devs say they have been inspired from those old space combat games we loved like X-Wing, Freelancer, Starlancer, Wing Commander and Freespace. They are games they all used to play and love and from that love, decided to create a new space combat game. The devs are boldly pronouncing this game as “space combat reborn”.
From the screenshots and videos I’ve watched, it definitely looks like it has a distinct arcade feel to it, I’d say Freelancer is what it most reminds me of. What most intrigues me is the ship the player flies. You control a spaceship known as the Strike Suit which seems to be your standard space fighter affair to begin with. But apparently with just a click of a button, your ship transforms into a Gundam Wing inspired looking mechanoid (a “hulking suit of space armour” is the devs description) which then has very different flight mechanics allowing you to strafe and circle. The devs have stated that they have combined both Western and Japanese design styles to give a more unique look to the game and I’d say it works with some impressive looking graphics.
Another bit of info which also piqued my interest was their choice of composer. Paul Ruskay has been hired to do all the in-game soundtracks. This is the man who created the soundtracks for Homeworld and its sequels. I’d argue that part of what made Homeworld such an awesome game was its ambient and immersive music. Who can forget his rendition of Barbers Adagio for Strings as you return to the Kharak system to find it burning? Will his music inspire such feelings in Strike Suit Zero as well? We shall see.
Why not take a look at their Kickstarter page to see more details on what they’ve got planned or watch the video below to see their mission statement.
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