StarCrawlers Chimera Updates, $15,459 and Counting

With four days to go, Juggernaut Games' Kickstarter campaign for their single-character dungeon crawler StarCrawlers Chimera has reached its initial goal of $15,000 and is now looking to raise a few dollars more. As such, let's check out some campaign updates.

Update #3 talks about the project's scope. Update #4 announces some additional backer rewards. And update #5 shares a few bits of concept art. Here's more on that scope thing:

A word on scope

For those asking about the scale of StarCrawlers Chimera and how it differs from StarCrawlers, we've got answers! Fair warning, it's about to get pretty wordy and detailed ;D

Blobber vs. Solo Hero

We love party based dungeon crawls (see StarCrawlers), but we wanted to try something different with Chimera. We focused on the idea of a lone character facing a seemingly impossible challenge and players getting to choose their own builds and strategies from a huge range of abilities. Instead of a party of classes with set paths, you’re a single extraordinary individual with a range of skills, chose by you, the player. We have found that demo players have really enjoyed experimenting with different combinations and sharing their tactics and gameplay moments.

Into the Megadungeon

StarCrawlers featured a ton of optional side-missions created with procedural generation - but after multiple runs through the same environments (looking at you, Offices), players began to feel the proc-gen burnout. Learning from this, we’re focusing on more hand-crafted content with randomization layered into it. Each floor should have a distinct feel, specific enemies, and thematic events. You’ll still experience a dungeon that has a different layout and flow with each game, but important “big moment” rooms and events are constructed for a cohesive story experience (with some random twists added in!)

How deep does the dungeon go?

We have a roadmap to create 10 central floors in the Chimera complex - with optional visits to other locales along the way. If you’ve already played the demo, you’ve seen there’s already a lot to explore and do on each floor. On top of the central storyline you’ll make your way through as you descend, we’re adding chained events that play out over several floors. Your choices on floor 1 affects the outcome and choices on floor 2, which in turn affect how the event resolves on floor 3, and so on. We’re aiming to have a few major event chains and several smaller ones too.

More exciting things to post soon, including a sneak-peak at new enemies clawing their way up from the depths...

- Juggernaut Games