Rebel Galaxy is getting a prequel, available early next year

Rebel Galaxy, developed by Double Damage Games and released in 2015, is getting a sequel. Called Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, it’s also being developed by Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer, the two-man team with roots in the Diablo and Torchlight series, Hellgate: London, Fate and Mythos. Outlaw is expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2019 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC for $30.

Fans of spacefaring games may recall that Rebel Galaxy, which was revealed here on Polygon in 2014, was a three-dimensional game locked to a two-dimensional plane. Players took on the role of massive capital ships and fired broadsides into the opposition in the style of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. The game also included loot mechanics borrowed from the action role-playing game genre.

Outlaw appears to be slightly different. Not only is it a prequel, taking place 34 years prior to the events of the original game, but it will allow players to leave the two-dimensional plane in some way. A cinematic trailer, released today on IGN, shows players in the role of a female pilot of a much smaller, more maneuverable ship.

“This has got to be the most ambitious game I’ve ever worked on,” said Baldree in a press release. “We took what worked from the last title, and then went a little crazy. It’s got a stronger focus on story and place, a huge jump in detail, and while it still works great for folks with a HOTAS [hands-on throttle and stick] at home, I think we’ve managed to make space combat accessible and fun for everybody else in a way that nobody has managed before. We’ve got a lot more to share in the months ahead”

A press release states that Outlaw will include out-of-the-cockpit adventure as well, specifically “billiards and dice poker, plenty of sketchy characters to meet, and sketchier jobs to take on.”

A teaser trailer, available on YouTube, shows a graphical style similar to the original game. It also throws an enormous amount of shade at the Star Citizen project, an ambitious collection of unfinished spacefaring games with a troubled development history which is nonetheless the most heavily funded crowdfunding endeavor of any kind, on any platform, for anything.

Double Damage also released a massive set of screenshots and original artwork, a portion of which we’ve included below.

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