Space Party: StarCrawlers Swaps Dungeons For Derelicts

Here's one of the many routes to becoming a game journalist: 1) Follow a bunch of game developers on Twitter, Tumblr, or anywhere else you find developers in the wild. 2) When they release a game or announce a game, tell people. Here's apparently the only route left to being a game developer: 1) Make a procedurally-generated game set in space.

Thankfully there's lots of different kinds of space games. StarCrawlers is "an endless first-person RPG adventure with procedurally generated levels, enemies, events, and loot." StarCrawlers has "deep character customization and a tactical time-unit based combat system to create an endless dungeon crawling experience." StarCrawlers "looks a bit Legend of Grimrock but set inside derelict spaceships instead of underground dungeons."

That last quote was from me. Trailer below.

I like the idea that derelict spaceships are basically spacedungeons. Are all buildings with corridors dungeons? Do I live in a housedungeon?

I haven't played many of these grid-steppy first-person games, as I'm not normally a fan of their combat. I do like the sound of the character development and multiple-choice-obstacle bits in StarCrawlers, though. Multiple-choice-obstacle bits are my favourite. There's another trailer showing more combat detail, and a second-by-second breakdown of what's happening in the combat. It explains more about the classes you can have in your party and the decisions you'll be making moment to moment.

StarCrawlers is being created by Juggernaut Games, who are made up of former developers of "the Home platform." Presumably that refers to the flopped PlayStation 3 Second Lifealike. It accounts for the excellent - and surprisingly cute! - animation in the trailers, though StarCrawlers looks considerably less likely to be shit. Go follow it.