Chris Roberts' Star Citizen continues its rocketlike ascent with the news that its crowdfunding drive has passed the $4.2 million mark . Since that story was published on Blues News, it's even raised an extra $400,000 odd - at the time of writing, it's now at $4,605,301 and counting. This means, according to Roberts Space Industries , that Star Citizen is now "the highest crowd-funded game project ever".
Now that the $4.5m stretch goal has been achieved, all the previously Kickstarter-only rewards have been unlocked, including "extended hardcore flight sim controller support" (flight chairs, multiple monitors etc), and a new alien race known improbably as the 'Kr'tak'. New stretch goals have, of course, been added as a result, at $5m and $5.5m respectively. If the project reaches these targets - which could be a stretch, as there's only one day remaining - we'll get a tablet companion app, celebrity voice acting for Squadron 42 ("we will bring back at least one favourite from Wing Commander!"), and, at $5.5m, the largest playable ship, the Bengal Carrier.
As Roberts himself notes on the site, reports of the space sim's death "have been greatly exaggerated." If you want to contribute to this extraordinarily successful project, you have just over a day left to do it.
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.