There’s a reason why great ways to get us into space already such as space elevators aren’t done yet. Because they cost a hellacious amount of cash and no one wants to foot the bill yet. It’s clear that long into the future, when our bones are dust, the same will be so for our great-great-great grandchildren, because the roads are never finished in SpaceRoads.
A Kickstarter game, the dev calls it a spiritual sequel to old DOS-based game SkyRoads. During its heyday, SkyRoads was a simplistic but nonetheless fun run-and-jump game where players had to control a ship hurtling towards the end point on those never-finished roads. Inexplicably, some of these roads were slippery, or had convenient refills of oxygen and fuel or were simply on fire. You then had to manage your ship, accelerating or decelerating as necessary, to get to the end safely. SkyRoads is pretty much that game, with updated visuals and more varied levels for players to play in.
Dev Wurd Industries has about 11 levels done so far, and to keep the spirit of the game, controls are entirely done using the arrow keys and spacebar as in the original title. The extras if you cough up look all right, including a custom box and 3D printed version of the ship you’re flying, the R-Series 1700F. And the graphics look pretty enough too, as the proof-of-concept video and screenshots seem to suggest.
What worries us though is that while this game looks really fun and really close to actually shipping on time by June 2014 as he suggests—the devs said they’re 90% done—the asking price is incredibly high. He’s asking for $10,000 Canadian dollars with about a month to go, and there’s really no indicator of what else can be offered. No stretch goals, not many tiers to choose from, and not much chance of it actually succeeding its funding. Which is why there’s probably only some $87 Canadian dollars pledged so far. Sure it’s just $10 Canadian for a copy of the game on a custom USB stick, but that still sounds a little… steep.
SpaceRoads hopes to be out on PC, Mac and it also seems the Ouya in 2014.
