Neil deGrasse Tyson regularly critiques the scientific accuracy of movies on Twitter, but he’s putting his money where his mouth is with a scientifically-minded space exploration video game called Space Odyssey—well, your money, technically, since it’s on Kickstarter. I’m sure Tyson would appreciate the clarification.
Of course, he’s a busy guy—and not exactly a game developer—so a team has been assembled to assist him with the project, which will feature Tyson as a holographic guide in-game. The game’s Kickstarter page says, “The Space Odyssey team is composed of creators of comic books such as Wolverine, conceptual illustrators for games such as God of War and Final Fantasy & of course, world-renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and his StarTalk All-Stars.”
The gameplay sounds a lot like No Man’s Sky, in that it will involve exploration, colonization, mining, and discovering alien species. Much of it will necessarily involve futurism based on “Concepts of Nanotechnology, Optogenetics, Singularity, Magnetic Transportation, Dark Matter, Compressed Time, Hydrogen Power, Solar Sails, Ramjet Fusion and more,” since we don’t exactly have the technology to be out exploring among the stars just yet.
However, the game mechanics will be driven by science, and the planets you explore will demonstrate what different planets might really be like—including Proxima B, a real exoplanet recently discovered relatively close to our solar system. There’s tons more to the game, both in single-player and online, like creating your own planet complete with unique chemistry and guiding it through natural disasters and dangers from other objects in space.
It seems like a hugely ambitious project, which is probably why its relatively low $314,159 Kickstarter goal is aimed at funding a community input aspect rather than being the game’s main funding source. We’re excited to see how it all turns out, and our only regret is that we probably won’t live long enough to actually visit planets outside our solar system and report all the game’s inaccuracies back to Tyson on Twitter.
(via Business Insider, image: Kickstarter)
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