Want to play a fun drinking game? Head over to the Kickstarter page for this new Descent sequel and take a shot every time you read the phrase “Six degrees of freedom” or the even more hip “6DoF.” That should get your Tuesday started off right.
Yes, there’s a new Descent on its way. Sixteen years after the release of Descent 3, veteran dev Eric Peterson’s studio Descendent Studios is partnering with Interplay to create a brand new sequel.
From the Kickstarter:
“We’re bringing back 6DoF by blasting Descent into the 21st Century with current-generation gaming technology. Descent: Underground is more than a graphics upgrade. Get ready for multiple types of customizable ships! Prepare for upgradable weapons and sensors with richly-detailed tech trees. Brace yourself for destructible voxel maps with new power-ups and mod tools to make your own maps and more!”
If you’ve made it this far and still don’t know what 6DoF means, it basically refers to spaceship movement: the X, Y, Z axis, plus pitch, yaw, and roll. Descent was a first-person shooter where you controlled a ship, and thus…6DoF.
Revolutionary for its time (1995), Descent sort of died out around the same time people stopped owning joysticks. Now seems like a smart time for a return though, considering the popularity of HOTAS systems for Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. Plus you’d be hard-pressed to find a PC gamer that didn’t own a 360 controller, which should be perfectly adequate for a new Descent game (if not ideal).
There are all sorts of other details on the Kickstarter page, including some fairly in-depth descriptions of the various ships, maps, multiplayer modes, and the background story. Now where’s that Carmen Sandiego reboot, Kickstarter?