Starflight 3 Updates, $349,754 and Counting

With $349,754 already pledged and slightly over ten days left to go, HumaNature Studios' Fig campaign for Straflight 3 still has a lot of ground to cover if it wants to reach its $800,000 goal. So, in order to help speed things along, the developers have created a number of backer-exclusive add-ons, described in this update, and announced a Reddit AMA with Greg Johnson, the original designer of the Starflight series. You can check out this update if you're interested in a quick summary of what was said there.

A few examples:

Science in Starflight 3

A lot of folks commented that humans’ understanding of the cosmos, exoplanets and the universe in general has grown by leaps and bounds since the original Starflight games released. So it begs the question will we incorporate these new findings in Starflight 3? Here’s Greg’s answer:

OH yeah! Capital SCIENCE Capital FICTION. When it comes to the ecosystems and planetary recommendations especially we're definitely gonna use the latest and greatest Scientific research we can find! For example the question of "What makes a planet more likely to support life or sentient life" has been heavily researched in the years since the original Starflight games. And we want to let players come away with a feeling like they've learned some science.

The Ship Crew

People can see right away when playing the original Starflight games aspects to them that were signs of the times. For example, the crew members didn’t have a lot of personality because that was a lot to fit onto a couple floppies! Greg had a good answer for this too:

We see an opportunity to represent your crew as characters with personality and relationships with each other and with you, the captain.

In Starflight 1 there were no individual characters and you're right this was due in large part to limitations of the time. We'd like to do more storytelling with interesting characters. We have a lot of exploration to do to find the right balance between the style of the original game and modern games. Not sure yet where the sweet spot will be!

The Story

The story is written! And it’s probably the most closely guarded secret on the team. So understandably people are curious about every aspect of it but in particular if it will connect to Starflight 1 and 2. Here’s Greg’s answer on it:

We see an opportunity to represent your crew as characters with personality and relationships with each other and with you, the captain.

I don't wanna give away TOO much but the story for Starflight 3 isn't a direct sequel to the previous games. There will definitely be some of the same alien races from the original games but Starflight 3 will take place in a whole new part of the Universe! And the story of Starflight 3 is bigger and deeper than ALL the previous games!