Thanks a lot for the mention!

I'm Kevin Wells, the coder/other stuff-er for Galaxy Chomp.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the game, and I'd be happy to answer them!

Hi DarkOppressor, first off good luck on your rouge-like game and hope it gets funded. Since your on your quest to save your world from the baddies, is there a time limit to this? Do you need to make it back to your home planet with the necessary goods to be successful?

You say the weapons will be more automated, what will you be able to do with your ship (ie: tweak engines, install upgrades to electronics, hire crew)?

And if your goal isn't met will you still work on the game and get it out to the masses when it is done?

Thanks for dropping bye DarkOppressor and welcome to SSC.

Thanks! 🙂

There is no hard time limit, no. The game's designed to force you to keep moving, but there is no "clock" or anything to worry about. There is a resource called power that is always draining at all times, and you need to find cheese (which is what ships are powered by, don't cha know?) to refill your power bar. However, cheese is a fairly rare item, and spawns less and less frequently the longer you dally in a certain area, so it compels you to always be moving to the next part of your journey.

As for the final goal, right now you need to make it back to the center of the galaxy (where you start the game) with all the story items. In the design we have an additional "endgame" where you actually return to your home galaxy with the items and have to use them to save the day. Whether that ends up in the game will depend on playtesting (would it add something that feels missing from the end?) and time/budget constraints. If it gets left out just because we run out of time, it will almost definitely get added in someday in the future in a patch or expansion or something.

As for customizing your ship. Each ship has several part slots. You find parts out in the game world. Each part has a category, as does each slot, such as "weapon" or "defense". Some examples of defense parts are shields, armor plating, and a point defense beam that shoots down incoming missiles. For weapons there are a variety of beam weapons, plasma weapons, mass drivers, missile launchers, and torpedo launchers, among others.

There are currently 5 part categories: Weapons, Defenses, Movement, Assistance, and the creatively named Other.

Some parts (all weapons, for instance) have a "tier" which determines their strength. So a tier 2 torpedo launcher, for instance, has a faster cooldown, and fires torpedoes with more damage and explosion radius than a tier 1 launcher.

(Most of) the parts start out unknown, so all you will know is that you have found a "red weapon" or something, but not what kind of weapon it is. You learn what kind it is by equipping and using it. Once you have done that, you will always know what all "red weapons" are for the rest of the game, but each new game all of that is randomized again.

If the goal is not met, what we do next will depend on why it was not met, if we can determine that. If it isn't met because, say, people just needed to see prettier graphics before they were willing to pledge, we will try to get some initial final artwork into the game, and then try the Kickstarter again. We're estimating the game will take about 8 months to complete, and that is with the Kickstarter funding, so without it it would take a very long time to do, unfortunately. I honestly can't see us just dropping the thing, so I can say that I really sincerely doubt a Kickstarter failure would mean the game will never ever see the light of day. But it is really up in the air right now, so I can't say anything for certain!

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I will be posting an update to the Kickstarter tonight that talks about some of the gameplay mechanics, and it will have some gameplay footage from the current build, too. You can see that here:  http://kck.st/Wg2R3L