DreamQuest Games‘ newest project, which is up and running on Kickstarter, will fund the creation of Alpha Colony, an exploration, building, and trading game that pits multiple players against a rag-tag (but tenacious) group of prospectors. Project founder Christopher Williamson hopes Alpha Colony will give families today the same great memories he made playing Atari with his family in the ’80s.
Alpha Colony is an eco-sim game, like Sim City or Civilization that teaches basic concepts like supply and demand in a gaming context. It’s a multiplayer game that uses resource cards, and whose gameplay will offer four phases: explore, build, produce, and trade. The player controls a rover, whose job it is to set up a mine, hunt for crystals, and search for the elusive Whompus.
At the end of every round of building an unexpected event, like a disaster, can change the colonies. Then all players watch the production phase when everyone gets new resource cards. In the trade phase the auctioneer offers additional resource cards to players, for a price.
DreamQuest expects Alpha Colony will be ready to gamers on iOS and a host of other platforms (Android, Mac, Linux and Ouya) by July 2013.
Interested backers can pledge $10 for the mobile version or $20 to receive mobile and desktop versions. Higher pledge tiers include special in-game rewards such as a T-shirt and figurine that are available only through Kickstarter. Backers are also the only ones receive a special First Colonist badge which a player needs to complete his collection of in-game badges. DreamQuest also participates in Kicking it Forward, and plans to donate 5 percent of their successfully funded campaign to help other entrepreneurs on Kickstarter.
Pledge before the funding period ends on Sunday Dec 2 2012 to help bring Alpha Colony to life.