KickStarter Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, a Square Enix-approved rogue-like sci-fi strategy survival game

[CyberWhale]

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander

A rogue-like sci-fi strategy survival game with base building, tactical combat, crew management and emergent storytelling.

In the midst of a disastrous war, you and your ragtag group of Terran officers discover anancient, derelict space station, and attempt to harness its mysterious power to turn the war's tides in a grand, desperate campaign to save the human race from extinction.

Halcyon 6 is a passion project inspired by our years years spent playing classic games likeStar Control II, Master of Orion, X-COM, Civilization and of course, rogue-like games likeFTL.

Halcyon 6 will target the PC/Mac first with other platforms later on.

Looks neat despite the super-generic premise.

New XCOM like base.

Beautiful looking JRPG blobber combat.

It even has hexes!

...and space combat!

 

[FuriousGamer87]

Looks promising though I dunno why they went with Squeenix collective for a new generic IP, when the whole point of the program is to use their IP. And that's 5% to Squeenix after kickstarter/indiegogo and associated payment processing fees, so 0.92*0.95=0.874. So for every dollar donors give, at least ~13 cents goes to something other than development. They're not getting any money from Squeenix either, and I haven't seen Squeenix marketing do anything for indies...

Squeenix have marketing people who already have established ties with the game journalists and other media.
And Squeenix deal is FAR FAR much better than all other publishers' deals, including ChuckleFish which is basically the same thing but 20% cut, confirmed by a dev who released under them. Or it's recently changed to 10% already? The guy I know still have to give 20% to ChuckleFish just for marketing with no extra funding from them like other publishers. Though they do help him find a programmer for crappy networking and a musician who can deliver some good audio.
This is pretty crucial for first time devs with no relationship with the media and not a LGBT nor interested to be one because based on my own experience and others I personally know of, it's pretty much impossible to get any coverage unless you already have ties with the media due to the amount of releases nowadays, the amount of junk mails and the lack of time for media people to parse though their general mails due to other commitments.

I think most people rather just give 5% to Squeenix rather than making themselves eunuchs, just for marketing.

 

[CyberWhale]

I'll put it this way: The first and only time I've heard about this kickstarter is in this thread. Not Squeenix's PR connections, not in the games media.

Getting the attention of RPS is more than enough in most cases.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I'll put it this way: The first and only time I've heard about this kickstarter is in this thread. Not Squeenix's PR connections, not in the games media.

Getting the attention of RPS is more than enough in most cases.

And they already made past their initial goal easily despite having no demo, no credential and just based on Squeenix marketing and their nice vid and gifs.

Spoiler

Note to self: Consider to start sucking Squeenix cock too if I even really want to go through with my own crowdfunding.

 

[Crooked Bee]

That looks pretty neat. I'm in.

 

[Infinitron]

Don't be ashamed of creating new threads, kids

 

[General Maxson]

I almost missed this and I LOVE Star Control 2! This seems great! I'm in. My only concern is that they seem mostly mobile game devs, but so far what I have seen - stretch goals AND pledge levels seem good.

 

[Zombra]

Looked pretty generic at first, but the more I checked it out, the more personality I found. Pushes the right buttons for me. I'm here to encouarge you to pledge so they can hit their stretch goal for a second campaign with a different theme.

 

[Ulminati]

Ticks all the right boxes for me. It totally flew under my radar. I had tons of fun with FTL, so this gets my jewroes for sure.

I'll moan and complain in this thread once they gib me the alpha to mess around in.

 

[CyberWhale]

Hope this turns out well.

 

[Zombra]

Good god, pledges went up like $20K in the last 10 hours. At a glance I didn't think they'd actually hit Space Rogues, but it's starting to look like they need more stretch goals

 

[Norfleet]

Ticks all the right boxes for me. It totally flew under my radar. I had tons of fun with FTL, so this gets my jewroes for sure.

You should wait and see, otherwise you might find yourself backing consoletardery.

 

[CyberWhale]

No PS4 port on launch.

 

[Ulminati]

 

[Grimgravy]

I'm glad they made it to the mini-campaign. Won't be shedding a tear for the consoletards, though.

 

[Norfleet]

As is proper. Glory to the Master Race.

 

[Galdred]

No PS4 port on launch.

I never understood the rationale for extra platform as stretch goals : It is not like the PS4 owners will fund the game in case it ever reaches the stretch goal, and PC owners would certainly prefer other features that would affect the game itself, than being able to play it on a PS4 too after they ever buy one.

 

[Ulminati]

Pre-alpha is out and I gave it a spin. It's pretty bare bones at the moment. But I've found 6 different factions with at least 3 different ships each. The UI needs work. Base and galaxy map need a zoom function. There are some quests that remain on the map after they are unsolvable. Tooltips need work - especially when selecting captain upgrades, as you have no way of telling exactly what they do until you pick them. Countdowns on abilities need numbers too instead of gradually filling up again.

Combat is only ship to ship right now as far as I've played. I don't know if ground missions are in yet. Space combat is turn-based now instead of cooldown-based like in the kickstarter video. Most abilities either inflict it exploit debuff statuses. When an ability exploits a debuff, the debuff is cleared and the ability deals way more damage. Since some of the debuffs are quite good, you generally want them to tick for as long as possible, then exploit them just before they time out. You will eventually have multiple fleets flying around and doing stuff. But in the early game at least I am very resource-starved.

This one could go either way. I'm getting a nice FTL vibe from it, but I don't know if it will be repetitive yet

 

[Zombra]

Are you on the forums, Ulminati ? Or are you just posting your criticisms on the Codex where they won't help?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/371200/

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[anus_pounder]

Looks good. Just spent my last few neo-shekels on the latest Fallout 4 DLC, so I don't have any to give this a spin atm, but putting this on my wishlist for the future.

EDIT: Oh Shit. This releases tomorrow! Refunded my Civ 6 special edition pre-order. I'll get the regular edition instead and I can always grab the DLC in a season pass or whatever.

Now the proud owner of Halcyon 6.

 

[Jimmious]

Its released. Im pretty interested, but I'd like a bit of Codex Consensus. Zombra ?

 

[Ironmonk]

Its with a discount of 15% till 15 September.

By the videos I saw I'm really interested, probably gonna buy it before 15 September if the reviews keep positive in the next few days.