Satellite Reign Brings Syndicate Successor to Kickstarter

[Andy Chalk]

Satellite Reign Brings Syndicate Successor to Kickstarter

[kickstarter=5livesstudios/satellite-reign]
Satellite Reign, a spiritual successor to Syndicate that looks and sounds like the real thing, is now up on Kickstarter.

Australian indie 5 Lives Studios is out to fill the holes in the hearts of Syndicate fans who were let down by last year's "in name only" offering from EA with Satellite Reign, a game that is technically not a followup to the Bullfrog classic but may be as close to one as we're going to get. Another game bearing the "spiritual successor" designation, Satellite Reign will place you in control of a team of four agents, each with unique skills and abilities, who square off against the forces of planet-controlling megacorporations for control of a dark, gritty cyberpunk city.

It's kind of a cliched setup, and the promise of "emergent gameplay" and a "fully simulated, living city" is the sort of thing we've all heard before, but the team behind it has a certain credibility - the head guy, Mike Diskett, was a programmer on the Amiga version of Syndicate and served as the producer and lead programmer on Syndicate Wars. The Kickstarter pitch video looks awfully good, too, and the brief snippets of gameplay look very much like the real deal.

The £350,000 ($550,000) goal is hefty for a project that doesn't bring any big names to the table, but these things don't come cheaply. And game music nerds may recognize the name attached to the first (and so far only) stretch goal, achieved at £380,000 ($600,000) - Russell Shaw, the man behind the music on many Bullfrog and Lionhead titles, including the original Syndicate.

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The usual cautions and caveats apply, but if you're a long-suffering fan of Syndicate you should probably at least take a minute or two to give it a look. The Satellite Reign Kickstarter runs until July 28.

Source: Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5livesstudios/satellite-reign]


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[Genocidicles]

I really hope it gets funded.

The latest Syndicate release was just an insult to the franchise, so it's good to see some devs trying to remain true to what made Syndicate the game it was instead of just trying to cash in on the current shooter craze.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Can you people just let me have five minutes with my money before you make a kickstarter to drain it all? So freaking rude...

 

[dumbseizure]

I just have one thing to say about this....this.....thing

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Bout bloody time that there is another thing for me to spend my money on then spend the next year crying until its released!

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Can people pllleeeease support this.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

So far Kickstarter UK has been a bit of a disaster zone for game projects, hopefully this one can turn the tide (and deliver on its promises so it won't be a one off).

 

[David Tlastname]

If a console port is announced as a stretch goal I'll make a decent sized backing to it.

I know that Syndicate's RTS controls would not work well with analog sticks, so the best likely candidate would be the Wii U and MAYBE the PS4 with its touchpad if you use it like a laptop trackpad

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Loved the first Syndicate for the SNES
Loved it
I've backed this awesome sounding thing of beauty

 

[ExileNZ]

Why are more people not talking about this? They've just hit the 50% milestone but aside from the odd comment here and on Reddit I don't see anyone (at least no one with a name) talking about it.

Did Andy talk about it in the latest podcast? He *should*.

(EDIT: Not to say Andy isn't anyone with a name, but I found his article by doing a keyword search, not on the front page)

 

[ExileNZ]

I am impressed at some of the things they want to do, the civilian AI sounds rather ambitious to me. Seeing how I loved Bullfrogs Syndicate, (and a mechanic akin to the persuadatron is in there. Meatshields ahoy! I only hope we can get the clown cars as well.....) I'll be putting some money toward this when I have some (damn car rego....). Never did get to play Syndicate Wars though, couldn't afford it first time round and when I did buy it, it didn't play nice with the win9x operating systems.

Syndicate Wars definitely kept the clown cars, I imagine they'll do the same here. I never tended to use civvies as meat-shields tho - they were worth 100 credits each alive, and they were very useful in shooting down surprise-flying-cars.
Did I mention Syndicate Wars had flying cars?

Love that game.

 

[ExileNZ]

I generally didn't use meatshields either, it was more effort than it was worth normally, but having 30 civvies, most armed with uzi's and shotguns was quite the sight to behold. The armed ones killed lots of them with the first salvo, but that agent....I don't think I'v seen one die so quickly.

I should dig it out and see if it will play with DosBox, or see if GoG has it one of these days. Or wait for Satellite Reign to come out...

GOG definitely has it, they put it up just a couple of months ago. At which point I bought it on the spot and played up to New York (Mission 9?) before remember how freaking hard it could get. If I wasn't so proud and insistent on persuading agents, I'd probably have finished the level by now. NYC is *hard* if you want to do everything right.
As for meatshields, I almost always persuade tonnes of civvies to get agents, but instead of using them as meat shields I protect them. Not for the challenge, just for the credits and the agents, but in any mission that throws flying cars at you that can be ridiculously hard.

 

[Mr_G]

I'm quite sure that once this game gets funded it'll be out on Steam and Gog too. DRM free FTW.
I own all Bullfrog gogs.

 

[Auron]

This needs more exposure, I just found out about it and it totally needs to be funded. I cannot believe people aren't flocking to this, it's what Syndicate should have been at last!