Revival Productions, a team made up of former Parallax Software members and creators of Descent, have turned to Kickstarter to fund their new game, Overload. In explaining why they’re using Kickstarter, Revival says “we’re very passionate about Overload and have self-funded the prototype, but now we need your support to finish what we started. We also want to get the community involved in the game, and Kickstarter is a great way to engage those who are as passionate about the game as we are.” As of writing this article, they’ve raised $64,221 of the $300,000 they’ve asked for, with 26 days left to go. 1,352 people have backed the game so far, and the funding deadline is March 11, 2016.
Heading the team as lead designer will be Luke Schneider, who worked on Descent 3 and Red Faction: Guerilla. The team will also feature co-founders and programmers at Parallax Software, Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog, who both worked on Descent and Descent 2. Kulas also worked on the Freespace and Red Faction series and Toschlog worked on Descent 3. Chris Clafin, who worked as an artist on Descent 3 will be Overload‘s lead artist.
“Kickstarter is a great way to engage those who are as passionate about the game as we are.”
Backers will need to pledge at least $25 to receive a digital copy of the game, with each extra copy being an additional $20. The digital copies are available on the platform of the backers’ choice: Xbox One, PS4, PC/Mac/Linux Steam key or DRM-free download via GOG or another service TBD.
The team says that VR is on the table, but that it will be one of their “later stretch goals.” “It’s a significant amount of work to make a fully detailed cockpit and pilot along with the additional UI, code, and controls tweaks necessary to make it a great VR experience.” Regarding user-created levels, they say they plan to release “the level and geometry mesh editors to the community after Overload is released, and supporting custom levels on the PC.”
To be clear, this is not the Descent game that appeared on Kickstarter in March of 2015, led by Eric Peterson. Revival included this disclaimer in their FAQ to help clear up any confusion: “Descent: Underground is being created by a different group of developers (with experience in space games like Wing Commander and Star Citizen) who have licensed the name from Interplay and are creating a new game with a different focus. We’ve talked to them a couple times and they seem pretty cool. Overload and Descent: Underground are completely different games from different groups of people, but we all love 6-degree-of-freedom shooters.”
It doesn’t appear multiplayer is in the cards this time around, but they’ve left the door open to future endeavors:
“We understand that multiplayer is hugely important to some players, but we made the decision to focus on creating a rich and full single-player experience. We have developed multiplayer games in the past and understand how awesome and fully featured they need to be to succeed. We want to make Overload the best it can be, and we’re putting all our resources into building an awesome game that everyone can enjoy regardless of internet connection, skill level, or player population. In the future we hope to develop a multiplayer version of the game, and we’ve thought about how to make it happen after Overload is done. When that time comes, we’ll make sure it’s as awesome as the single-player experience that we’re working on now.”
Stated system requirements for Overload on PC are a 2GHz dual core (i3+ recommended), 4GB RAM, a graphics card with shader 3.0 support (1GB+ VRAM recommended), and 10GB of HD space (“rough estimate, could be higher”).
