Shackleton Crater Kickstarter Asking For $700k

Joe Ybarra, one of the co-founders of Electronic Arts, is looking for $700,000 to create a space age Sim City.

Shackleton Crater is a new Kickstarter game being spearheaded by Joseph Ybarra. It looks to be an ambitious game that combines aspects of many of the legendary titles that Ybarra has worked on in the past. It looks like it could be a Sim City of the moon. An inter-planetary multiplayer game that serves to reignite our interest in space travel.

It looks to be a hard science fiction game based on endless amounts of research and even actual topographical maps of the moon. The team is actually going to digitize moon data into a sandbox full of moon rocks for you to play with. The gameplay of Shackleton Crater is broken up into phases. Each one features new gameplay and challenges. From getting supplies to the moon and solving the struggles of setting up the base, to exploration, and finally reaping the rewards of your hard work will all be featured throughout the game.

Mercifully, you'll be able to play it solo or choose to play it online and collaborate on your moon bases. From the looks of it, Mr. Ybarra may have taken note of the recent fumblings of a similar building simulation game. Also, the game will be based around a randomized mechanic so it will be well worth multiple play throughs to see how many different ways you can get your moon people to flourish.

$700,000 is quite a lot of money to ask from Kickstarter and their stretch goals are even more ambitious. A cool $4 million and they'll map the whole moon and release the game open source since they'll have secured funding for additional games.

Could Shackleton Crater be the space colonization game we were all looking for? Could it be the city sim without broken, always-on DRM. Possibly. Go have a look at the Kickstarter and see if you want to invest in some further space exploration that you can do from the comfort of an office chair.