SpaceVenture
Image: Two Guys From Andromeda

Back in 2012, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe – the creative forces behind Sierra's Space Quest series – announced a spiritual successor in the form of SpaceVenture. Crowdfunded on Kickstarter, it raised over $530,000 and was expected to launch in February 2013. That sadly never happened, and the game was stuck in development hell for the best part of a decade.

Now, it has finally made its way into the hands of backers (and not the general public, it should be noted), but in quite a poor state.

As highlighted by Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi, SpaceVenture is quite a mess at this moment in time. Cifaldi notes that the game 'softlocks' multiple times, even when following the official walkthrough guide, and that the tutorial mode is broken so it isn't totally clear how you should be interacting and combining objects to solve puzzles.

However, Cifaldi adds:

...this should go without saying but LEAVE THE POOR DEVS ALONE. I promise they know it's a mess. Game dev is really hard and that Kickstarter money doesn't stretch very far in a dev cycle of literally a decade. I feel bad, they overscoped and painted themselves in a corner.

Hopefully the developers can clean things up before the game's wider release, because it does look very promising in places:

If you'd like a little more insight into SpaceVenture, we'd recommend you check out the video below. Oh, and don't forget to let us know if you're a backer and you have your copy by posting a comment.

[source twitter.com]