Howling Moon Games Launches KickStarter Campaign

^[1]Ontario’s Howling Moon Games ^[1], creator of Bloodlines of the Fallen: Anna’s Sacrifice, Molly Jones and House of Ooze, has launched a KickStarter fundraising campaign ^[2] for its upcoming title SpaceCore, an extended tower defense game where players run a private galactic police force, taking the motto of “protect and serve” into space.

Under military contract and extreme political scrutiny the player must watch over their expanding jurisdiction. Spacecore combines strategy with features from role playing, simulation and resource management games. To create a flow between features the game has three areas including conflict zones, hangar deck and the galactic office.

Conflicts dynamically appear, evolve and spread on your star map. Some conflicts are forced upon your Spacecore by military or political request; the rest are open for you to stop – however some conflicts will increase in severity and spread across a planet and sector. Letting this happen could seriously damage your reputations.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da0belYeNU8]

Conflicts have different objectives and enemies requiring specific unit combinations to be victorious. Making sure you have the right units by gaining intelligence becomes integral otherwise the cost of suppressing conflict successfully sky rockets causing your Spacecore to fall into the red. Additionally players should be careful with their units; once they are eliminated they are removed from their hanger. Losing a rank 100 unit could have a major impact on a players overall performance.

Combat itself is wave based and allows the player to both attack and defend depending on objectives. The player’s objectives will change throughout conflict and more become visible based on the amount of intelligence gathered. Conflicts combine offensive, defensive and non-lethal units, decoys like food crates and money drops, structures of influence and sanction specials including drone strikes.

The Hangar is the game’s centre. A player’s Spacecore is run from the hanger:

• Units – modular with varying movement, engines, armor and weaponry. A player can purchase or hire units, build their own or customize existing designs from corporations and the black market. The more success a unit has the greater its rank, performance and possible sale value.
• Facility – determines storage capacity for owned and hired units. Technology and work areas can be purchased or upgraded to add new possibilities or reduce current limitations. Additionally hire employees to make everything run to maximum efficiency. A well ran hanger will have special perks.
• Finances – as a new Spacecore you get a onetime starter’s fee and a monthly salary from the military. Earn bonuses for successful conflicts, corporation sponsorship or protection money from capped reputation zones. Manage your outgoings to stay in the black and use any means possible including black market sales, underhand deals and blackmail.
• Intelligence – from the star map the player can see all zones. At any point a player can hire spies to find intelligence on its planets and conflict zones. The more spies you have in a location and the better your analysis hirelings the more you can uncover about maps, enemy positions, waves sequences, hidden political and media objectives. Additional information can be uncovered, some worthy of blackmail.

As the owner of a Spacecore private force you’re under observation by the Galactic Office. Your actions within conflicts will determine your reputation across the star map. As your reputation increases your rank will; at the same time if you’re considered to be too offensive, passive, uncaring or over apologetic your reputation changes. You must meet quarterly and yearly quotas for your military funding to continue. The game will have a number of means to earn additional funding including blackmail, selling units on the black market or becoming cozy with big corporations.