Zerospace is taking off on Kickstarter: a combination of RTS with role-playing elements and a dense story, built by Starcraft pros.
Does anyone here miss StarCraft or WarCraft? Fans of Command & Conquer too, please stop crying for a moment, this one might interest you too. On Kickstarter, an in-development real-time strategy game by genre pros is currently raising money very successfully.
The sci-fi RTS Zerospace has already received more than 300,000 euros pledged by almost 4000 backers, which already (25 days before the end of the campaign) covers some of the stretchgoals and pulverizes the set minimum amount.
The title promises to be a modern RTS, with role-playing facets and a strong story, but also with the old-school qualities that once distinguished Blizzard’s legendary series, so to speak: from RTS pros who love Mass Effect and Baldur’s Gate to ravenous fans of 2000s real-time strategy.
What kind of game does Zerospace want to be?
Once Zerospace is released on Steam in late 2025, it aims to score with three modes:
- Campaign
- In your upgradeable mothership, you and your team of specialists travel the galaxy completing missions to advance in the story. This is where the elements of Mass Effect and Baldur’s Gate come into play, as you’ll have dialogues and make decisions on board.
- Coop
- Up to three players fight in scenarios against AI
- Galactic Warfare: mode with thousands of players around the conquest of systems in a persistent galaxy
- Versus/Competitive: The expectable core of the game. Everything is developed around this quality. In the past two years, this has also been the focus in development. Leaderboards and ranking/matchmaking systems should be in place right at release.
The following numbers reveal what you can expect at release:
- Open world campaign with 13 main missions, 14 hero loyalty missions and 40 side missions.
- Three hours of cinematic cutscenes and interactive dialogues that let you determine the ending of the game.
- Four main factions, each with ten units and nine buildings.
- Six mercenary factions, each with four to five troop types
- 14 heroes in campaign mode of the different factions or one each to lead your troops in multiplayer/versus.
- 1vs1 and 3vs3 ranked games, top skirmish vs AI.
If you want to know more about the game, its factions, the story or the minds behind it, it’s best to take a look at the extensive (Kickstarter page).
You can get a deeper impression of the gameplay by watching this showmatch of two developers. Both professional gamers are in their element there and show what they can do with their own game.
What do you think? Does Zerospace appeal to you? Do you think the concept is coherent and can work? Do you know the developers and maybe that’s why you’re already optimistic about the title? Or does the idea leave you completely cold, because you don’t mourn the old RTS series of the 2000s anyway? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments!
