Terrestrial Domination, a space-based real-time strategy Kickstarter from indie developer Christopher Johnson, is offering players a chance to try before they buy with the alpha demo.
The Kickstarter was inspired by sci-fi works like Star Trek, as well as real-time strategy series StarCraft. Its alpha demo, which Johnson encourages potential backers to try out first, is available on his website.
Speaking with Polygon via email, Johnson explained that when developing the idea for the game, he wanted to work with a solar system and orbiting celestial bodies. "It would be cool to have your home base as a planet," Johnson said, "because then your base and the enemy's bases are moving around."
Terrestrial Domination has a heavy focus on fighting within solar systems.
Johnson's thinking eventually evolved with more maps and bigger solar systems — planets that could be colonized and rotate at different speeds, and asteroids that needed to be mined for resources. The game has a heavy focus on fighting within solar systems, and players can build space stations and ships.
Getting the project's celestial workings to behave correctly was a process. Johnson made adjustments three times before systems would function properly.
"Just getting the solar system to work right was hard," Johnson said. "At first I couldn't get the moons to orbit their planet very well. And the space stations would just follow the planet around without orbiting."
Johnson hopes to expand upon Terrestrial Domination, including different ways to attack enemy planets or adding black holes. Releases for Windows, Mac and Linux are in progress, but other platforms are a possibility as well if the game is successful.
The Terrestrial Domination Kickstarter will end on Sunday, Feb. 3. It's currently raised about $300 of its $10,000 goal.
