In March this year, it was announced that two of Runic’s (Of Torchlight fame) co-founders, Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer, were leaving the company to found Double Damage Games. Not much had been heard from them since they made that announcement until today when they announced Rebel Galaxy.
A two-man studio with experience in games like Fate, Diablo 1 and 2, Hellgate London, Torchlight 1 and 2, among other Action RPGs, they have set out to make a new action space game. While relatively little is known about it (it was just announced after all) there is a killer trailer for it that shows how far technology has come that a small team can do this much – even with hiring art and music contractors to fill in some voids in the team’s skills.
Rebel Galaxy has you take on the role of an outlaw pirate/smuggler/adventurer, traveling at the edge of space. You travel about exploring the galaxy, battling pirates, making friends… or betraying them when they least expect it. The promise of upgrading your ship and buying new ones is presented and given Baldree’s and Schaefer’s experience at loot-centric game play one can imagine they’ll probably do a good job with it.
The trailer shows quick, exciting spaceship combat action which seems to be a focus unlike the slower ponderous strategic combat that often is in space games. That’s not to say there isn’t skill – there likely is, but it’s a faster paced, action combat instead.
The randomly generated universes should help with the replayability of the game, which might be a bit of a concern for some given that unlike many of the titles Baldree and Schaefer have worked on Rebel Galaxy is single player. Some commentators on it have compared it in feel to Firefly, which is understandable given the edge of the universe, outlaw trader type feel that is gone for. It’s unlikely that Rebel Galaxy will reach those heights – but at least they won’t have Fox around trying to screw them up!
There is no release date yet for Rebel Galaxy and it has been confirmed for Steam (presumably for the PC), and PS4. They hope to do an Xbox One release but it is not confirmed.
You can see the full trailer here:
