Descendent Studios, a Texas based game developer, has just confirmed the release of Descent: Underground on Steam’s Early Access.
Descent: Underground is a reboot of the classic Descent, from the 1990s; which once again combines FPS styled gameplay with six degrees of freedom vehicular movement. The team took to Kickstarter to crowdfund the title and only six months later are now releasing the first build of the game to the general public. Available to all crowdfunding backers via their DescendentStudios.com accounts, the Early Access build features “three ship classes, five map and game mode combinations, and several diverse weapons.”
Descendent Studios CEO Eric Peterson, known to many as ‘Wingman’, spoke alongside the announcement, commenting “Fully testing and balancing a richly-featured multiplayer and single player game requires a lot of players. Steam Early Access gives us the chance to bring more people into the game at a crucial stage of development and get their feedback, which we plan to incorporate into the final game.”
Peterson went onto to discuss the planned business model for the title; “In response to a broad cross-section of our community, we’ve also decided to move away from the micro-transactions model we had discussed during our Kickstarter. Once we leave Early Access, any future content will be bundled into larger expansions. Fans have spoken and we listened, ‘buy once, play forever’ is the course they wanted, and one we fully embrace.”