Indie developer Simon Roth has "Maia" brewing and he has gone to crowd-funding source Kickstarter for help. Mind you, he's already over his original goal of £100,042 goal, with £109,004 as of press time and there's 65 hours to go, too.
Labeled as a "Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarf Fortress on a primordial alien world," in its Kickstarter page, it's a "god" game but with its own unique twist.
Here's the game's setting to let you know where you are, and what you're doing in "Maia."
In 2113 the human race began its first extra solar colonisation program. One of the targets of this endeavour was Maia.
The colonization process had commenced almost twenty years earlier. Barrages of satellites equipped with powerful solid state lasers were placed in geosynchronous orbit around the planet. Their mission to slow and deflect major meteoric threats. The dense volcanic atmosphere was then seeded with sulfur, in an effort to calm and cool it. After a brief fourteen years of orbital terraforming, earth's political elites deemed the planet safe for human settlement, despite little being known about the surface.
After an outcry from the scientific community, a brief study was commissioned and the planets surface was found to be: "Mostly harmless".
Mostly.
If that's not enough to get you in a kickstarting mood, maybe the videos below will. In the first video, we can see Roth going through the upcoming game via a First-Person Mode Test.
In the second video, Roth talks about Maia and why you might want to fund it.
Lastly, here are gameplay details and a features list of what to expect from the game.
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You must excavate an underground colony to escape the hostile surface of the world. Mine minerals for construction, build rooms to house, feed and entertain your colonists and intricate defenses to protect them from dangerous wildlife.
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Battle the hostile environment of intense seismic activity, meteor strikes, solar flares and the alien ecosystem, whilst maintaining the atmosphere, temperature and integrity of your base.
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Carefully manage your lighting to control the unstable moods of your colonists, guide your precious robots and to slow the encroaching jungle.
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Research sources of power, water and food. Explore the surface and perform science to produce the future technology you need to survive your new home.
Features:
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Up to 2km x 2km x 2km of procedural world
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Complex colonist AI
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Dark humour
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A unique aesthetic
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Water and Lava simulation
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A dark ambient soundtrack
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Cellular Atmosphere
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A simple minimalist UI
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Inspired by 1970s hard sci-fi
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Intricate defense systems
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Bi-polar androids
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First person mode
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Open data for modders.
Maia is set for a PC release and will support OSX, Linux and Windows with an unspecified release date for now. If you want to support it, you can do so by backing its Kickstarter efforts and reading up on the game itself by clicking here.
