Star Citizen funding passes $37 million, new systems added

Space sim Star Citizen is continuing to steadily pull in funding, passing $37 million from project backers yesterday, developer Cloud Imperium Games founder Chris Roberts wrote on the game's official blog.

Since launching in October 2012, the crowdfunding campaign has pulled in $37,117,312 from 369,742 backers at the time of writing.

Reaching this dollar amount unlocked an additional star system for players to explore, nestled in the center of a new nebula. The Tanga System once contained a massive red giant star in its center, with a small planet suitable for life orbiting the system's outer ring. But the star collapsed into a white dwarf, blasting away the planet's atmosphere and throwing it into a deep freeze forever. Players will find this system as it is now: a collapsed star with dead planets orbiting around it.

Cloud Imperium is also adding another new system containing an "unexplored natural wonder." The new UDS-2943-01-22 system is a trinary star system, which means three stars are orbiting each other — two collapsed white dwarfs and a pulsar. This has created a strong gravitational force, and Star Citizen's scientists believe a jump point to get to the system could be nearby in an area of space already explored by humans. Players will get the change to find that jump point and discover if planets exist in the trinary system.

Roberts writes that the next stretch goal at $38 million will unlock another area, a four-planet system featuring one habitable planet — a waterworld including a small human colony and developing microorganisms in the depths of its cold oceans. Players can now vote on what the $40 million stretch goal will include: a lost human colony, alien science outpost or a ghost world.