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Satellite Reign

Indie Calendar - Satellite Reign

Financed via Kickstarter and currently on Early Access, we touch base with 5 Lives's Satellite Reign ahead of 2015.

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The new Syndicate that EA and Starbreeze Studios conjured up in 2012 didn't satisfy fans of the old games. After all it was a first-person shooter far removed from the original Bullfrog series. So when Mike Diskett (director on 1996's Syndicate Wars at Bullfrog) took to Kickstarter for Satellite Reign in a bid to create a spiritual successor to Syndicate Wars, there was a bit of a buzz in the community. It was funded to the tune of £461,333 in July of 2013 and recently launched on Steam Early Access.

Satellite Reign

Rather than doing a botch job of breaking down the concept ourselves, the original description on Kickstarter still holds true as to what the game is:

"Satellite Reign is a real-time, class-based strategy game. You control a team of four cybernetically enhanced agents, each with distinct and unique abilities, collectively battling for control of a simulated, living breathing cyberpunk city.

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The game world is designed to facilitate emergent gameplay, giving you the tools and freedom to play how you want to play, so you can create strategies and scenarios that not even we had anticipated!

Customise your team with the strength to destroy your enemies head-on, or hack into their facilities to manipulate their infrastructure without them ever knowing you were even there.

Will you take down your enemies with brute-force? Covert espionage and infiltration? Or will you use propaganda to influence the citizens of the city and overthrow the controlling powers?"

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It's clear that the concept held a lot of appeal and it's the kind of game that large publishers simply don't greenlight these days (almost without exception).

"We describe the game as a spiritual successor to Syndicate Wars," says Mike Diskett. "I was project lead and lead programmer on Syndicate Wars and am one of the founders of 5 Lives studios who first Kickstarted Satellite Reign in July 2013."

Currently on Steam Early Access, one of four planned districts of the game is playable (The Downtown District), but the others are built they just need to be fleshed out with gameplay. The overall game also needs a number of systems added on top of what's already there. The full game is planned for release in the first half of 2015.

"The game has just finished its first week on sale on Steam Early Access and has been well received picking up a 90% positive review rate, and has only made one person very, very angry by its existence," says Mike Diskett. "One week in and we have released two updates of bug fixes despite the temptation of Don't Starve Together coming out."

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The work that lies ahead in 2015 is clearly to finish the game and ship: "We will keep fixing bugs and updating the build until we reach that glorious point of Satellite Reign 1.0 where we will exit early access and ascend into a state of nirvana," says Diskett. "At that point we might even start looking at Co-op and multiplayer, maybe even an interior for that one guy on the internet."

Maybe interiors. You heard it hear first. As old fans of Syndicate and Syndicate Wars we're excited to see where this game ends up once that state of nirvana is achieved.

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