In a victory for justice and, more specifically, Perihelion Interactive, six-player sandbox sci-fi RPG The Mandate has been funded. They’re a week early, which you’d presume would mean a little time to turn all the lights off on the shuttle and just drift through the vacuum, minds pleasantly empty, until required to write a celebratory Kickstarter update.
But shockingly, no: they’ve already prepared a new developer log for the occasion, and announced three new feature-carrots to tempt those last few budding backers.
Perihelion had suggested a not-insubstantial $500,000 target for the campaign, but they’re already $15,000 beyond that at the time of writing, with five days still left on the clock.
“We’re excited that we’ve reached our initial funding goal for The Mandate and look forward to seeing what stretch goals we can achieve before the campaign ends,” writes an evidently ambitious executive producer, Ole Herbjørnsen. “Everyone at Perihelion is extremely passionate about The Mandate and we will strive to exceed on our backers expectations when the final game is released in 2015.”
Those stretch goals reach all the way to $800k, beginning with choice-heavy, on-planet “away missions” at $600k. $700k will mean Perihelion will build the starbase interiors required to accommodate boarding operations, which sounds terribly exciting in the wake of Assassin’s Creed Farrrr: Black Flag. And at $600k, they’ll be able to afford the programming and design time to ease modding and total conversion of the finished game.
My hope is that mod support will come anyway. Perihelion cite Total War and The Elder Scrolls as inspirations in that field, and so are well aware of the long tail a community development scene can offer the right game. As it is, modders are starved for easily editable isometric RPG engines – at least until Divinity: Original Sin turns up next year.
Ah: the developer log! Conducted by a friendly man in a silly hat, it delves into the exploration, combat and starbase modes which make up The Mandate’s compellingly complex whole.
And finally, I’d hate for you to forget the role of Argus Filch in all this. On the whole, The Mandate’s looking pretty swish for a game missing $500,000’s work, don’t you think?