Mutinous Ship-Builder Defect Now Has a Demo
Mid-Kickstarter demo for sci-fi ship-builder
Defect is just over half-way through a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign and has more than half of its total still to raise. Now, if you're unconvinced by the videos and words in the pitch, you can download a demo to see if an actual chunk of the game is enough to sway you into tipping your hat and credit card in the direction of developers Three Phase Interactive.
The premise is simple - construct a spaceship, using beautiful sci-fi-retro-styled weapons and parts, and then hunt that same ship down when the crew eventually rebel and eject you into space.
I've had a quick blast on the demo, and found both the ship-building and combat enjoyable. Knowing that you'll lose a ship and have to take it down allows for all kinds of tactical trickery, and suddenly the Death Star's Thermal Exhaust Port makes perfect sense. An intentional weakspot engineered by nefarious Imperial types who were afraid that their Not-A-Moon might fall into the wrong hands.
The team working on Defect are former THQ developers who worked on "a very long list of pc/console titles that you almost certainly never played". I have certainly never played the games listed on the Kickstarter page (The Polar Express, Nicktoons Unite!, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, Marvel Super Hero Squad and Monstaaa!) but now that the demo is available, I have played Defect, and that's what really matters.