Less than a week into its whirlwind Kickstarter – remember, we didn’t even know there’d be a Kickstarter two months ago! – Stars Reach has raked in $500,000 in crowdfunding. Raph Koster-led studio Playable Worlds had originally sought $200,000, not so much to fund the game, which is already deep in pre-alpha testing, but to demonstrate the demand for a sprawling MMORPG sandbox.
Stretch goals “unlocked” thus far include the Hansian species, crafting appearance customization, and now, at $500K, the Hyugon species. We say “unlocked” as PW has clarified these species and mechanics are coming to the game regardless, just ahead of launch rather than after launch thanks to met stretch goals.
The team hasn’t taken the wraps off the Hyugon species just yet as the unlock was just this morning, but we do now have a deep-dive on the Hansian species, which is sort of, well, fishy. As in actual fish people. The team describes Hansians as being a generous, nomadic, “free-spirited, go-with-the-flow people” – and “cosplayable on a budget.” They also freaking love ramen noodles.
“Our earliest versions were very very fishlike, but feedback showed that relatively few people actually want to play as something quite that alien,” the devs say. “The farther you go from human, the more important it is that the result be compellingly cute or appealing in some way. The breakthrough came with the image [to the right here], what we ended up calling the ‘princess’ take on the species. We had always wanted to reflect the colorful variety of tropical fish. In fact, we used cosplay reference where the cosplayer used glitter makeup applied through netting to create the illusion of scales. That ended up reflected in the speckled pattern on the forehead.”
In other Stars Reach news, the team has released another lengthy Q&A with Raph Koster.
