Satellite Reigns Reaching Kickstarter Goal, In-Engine Footage Released

Satellite Reigns, a PC, Mac and Linux strategy game hyped as a spiritual successor to the Syndicate series, is closing in on its funding goal on Kickstarter. To drum up additional interest in the game, 5 Lives Studios has released new information and media.

SR is set in a future ruled by corporations. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while everyone else fights for scraps. The player leads a secret organization that seeks to topple corporate rule. They'll lead small teams of agents on clandestine missions.

The player can determine how to tackle each mission. A new post on the 5 Lives Studios website gives a detailed run-through of a stealthy walkthrough. In the sample mission, the player has to steal an experimental power cell.

"Dean has spent a good amount of time hacking into banks around the city and has a decent flow of cash coming in. Most of his agents’ upgrades have been focused on hacking abilities, stealth, and surveillance. He has paid off the manager of one of the CCTV stations in the district and is putting money into the intelligence network in the area too."

The player learns through his contacts that there's three ways to get into the facility where the power cell is housed. They can fight their way through the main gate or side entrance. However, because Dean wants to avoid a fight, he'll take the secret entrance. In order to unlock it, he'll need to get the DNA of two personnel who work there.

In order to get the first target, Dr. J. Duncan, Dean sends an agent to kidnap him durin a trip to the red light district. He then brings the doctor to his cloning facility and makes a clone to bypass the lock.

The second target, Professor L. Rammy, takes a bit more work because he has two bodyguards. A hacker agent takes over the neural computer of one bodyguard and causes him to lure his two companions to a remote location. He then fries the brain of the controlled bodyguard and performs a stealth takedown on the other. The Professor tries to run so a second agent guns him down. Now they've got the DNA samples necessary to open the secret entrance

Written walkthroughs are nice but prospective backers have been asking for gameplay footage. Unfortunately, 5 Lives can't release a gameplay trailer just yet.

"To accurately portray the kind of immerse, simulated and emergent world we want to create, we need to actually create it for reals!" the studio said. "And that’s what this Kickstarter campaign is for, to create the game. We’d love to be able to demonstrate a mission played numerous different ways to sell the idea to you but that would require several months and a lot of money to produce. If we could do that we’d have the game half done and we wouldn’t really need Kickstarter to get us off the ground."

To throw gamers a bone, though, 5 Lives released a new "in-engine gameplay visualization" video. It features some additional footage not seen in the first Kickstarter pitch video. It gives you a feel for what the game's Unity-powered graphics will look like.

Satellite Reign's Kickstarter goal is £350,000. They're currently over £310,000 and have six days to collect more funds. If you want to donate, head here.