The Elite: Dangerous crowdfunding mission was touch and go. I am an avid fan of retrogaming (mainly because I am old and spent many younger years twiddling with computers made by Sinclair, Atari and Acorn etc) so was anxiously watching the Elite: Dangerous KickTraq funding chart. A couple of weeks ago it didn’t look like it was going to make it but the trend in funding experienced a nice incline around Christmas Day and with two days left to go the project surpassed its funding goal of £1,250,000.
There is more good news for the developers as the Kickstarter project, still with over a day to go, looks set to reach a funding level of about £1,350,000 – a whole extra £100k. Having surpassed the goal, the project founder, David Braben, has updated the Kickstarter page today with the following statement:
"This is just a mini-update to thank everyone for their amazing support. As I write, we are at a pledge total of just over £1,287,000 and 21,816 pledges.
Astonishingly we crossed the line on my 49th birthday yesterday, which really made my day. I was really touched, delighted, excited, relieved by the news. It is really really great.
There will be a further update later today. Another £113,000 and we hit the Macintosh stretch goal too.
Huge thanks once again. David"
To help get more pledges a new pledge level of £25 has been introduced which allows a backer to “Download a single copy of the game and also gain 500 credits when starting a new game.” The new £25 pledge level is limited to 5,000 backers. Furthermore if the project hits £1,500,000 of funding, before close-of-play in 30 hours, then the game will benefit from 25 playable ships rather than the 15 originally planned.
Elite history
The original Elite space adventure trading game, one of the most successful computer games of the 1980s, was released on the BBC Micro and used less than 22k of memory. The new game is based upon the same principles of starting “with a spacecraft and a small sum of Credits. You will be able to trade, pirate, bounty-hunt, explore, and salvage your way to wealth and fame”. However Elite: Dangerous will bring “sumptuous graphics” and more to make a more immersive space experience.
Whatever happens with the “stretch goals” Elite fans can now sleep easily, only needing the patience to wait for the game to be released for PCs around about March 2014.
