Parallax Software’s relationship with Interplay is, shall we say, complex.  Revival Productions was started so there’d be a clean slate to develop Overload.

We’ve been pleased and flattered in recent years by the number of projects inspired by Descent. The 6-DOF genre is growing, and the variety of the games available help reach new players which is a huge benefit for everyone.  We can’t speak for these other projects, but the goal on Overload has been to apply modern technology to a new game that gets to the essence of of what we created 20 years ago: a tense, action-packed experience in a full six-degree-of-freedom world.

Overload is a new game with a new story in a new world, but we will be able to include elements from Descent as bonuses, secrets, etc.

Due to overwhelming demand, we are now committing (if the Kickstarter makes it) to making aMULTIPLAYER EXPANSION for Overload. We always wanted to have multiplayer and believed we would eventually, but we did not feel comfortable making a public commitment to it. It’s too easy for something like multiplayer to blow up the schedule and adversely affect the single player game. We want to hit our single player date with a great game.

So, here’s our plan: We will deliver the single player game in March, 2017. If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, we will deliver multiplayer as an expansion sometime after that (likely 6-8 months). Everyone who backs the campaign at the DIGITAL EDITION reward level and above will receive a free copy of the multiplayer expansion. We are not sure on the scope, but it will include the competitive modes and key features that kept Descent going for over 20 years.

Overload supports multiple controller configurations, including using multiple joysticks.  We’re big joystick fans from back in the day, but we think Overload works great with a gamepad too.  You can also play with keyboard and mouse, and the controls are fully reconfigurable.

Overload will have detail settings that should make the game playable on any relatively modern hardware.  To get the best experience we recommend:

• Graphics card with Shader 3.0 support (1GB+ VRAM recommended)
• 2GHz Dual core processor or higher (i3 or higher recommended)
• 4GB of memory
• 10GB of HD space (rough estimate, could be higher)

Overload is being developed using Unity 5.  We’ve found Unity to be a great engine and we’re making the most of the advanced rendering features in Unity 5.

We now fully committed to making a true VR version of the game. Cockpit-based games naturally work great for VR, and once we put the cockpit in Overload, it became obvious why. It will be a lot of work to rework the UI and get all the details right, but if the Kickstarter succeeds, we will be taking it on.

We are building our levels with a custom standalone editor. It would be a fair amount of added work to make it more user friendly and properly documented, but we hope to do it.

Interesting that you asked – we’ve been asking ourselves the same question. Good game, FreeSpace.  It sure would be nice to see an awesome spiritual successor to FreeSpace.

Due to the original contract, the IP is divided between Parallax Software and Interplay.  Parallax owns a vast majority of the visual content and story, while Interplay owns the name and audio.   We all have our favorite parts of Descent and we’ll work into Overload those elements that we think make for a better game. At this point in development, we have been very focused on tools and tech and core systems. It will be easy to drop stuff in, but we need to think about how things tie together…though it would be hard to imagine no Easter eggs.