Homeworld 3 was just announced along with a crowdfunding campaign to get it off the ground.
There are no bigger names in space RTS than Homeworld. The original Homeworld debuted in 1999 during the golden age of real-time-strategy games and went on to win multiple awards and become the highest-rated PC game of the year (according to Metacritic). A sequel would arrive in 2003 which was also well received, but then a series of financial missteps threw the franchise into limbo before getting shelved.
It wasn’t until the intellectual property was purchased by Gearbox in 2013 that we saw a resurgence in the Homeworld name. In 2016, Blackbird Interactive came out with Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a more classic 2-dimensional RTS that was a prequel to the original Homeworld. It was a decent enough game, but it wasn’t what fans were really clamoring for, and that’s an honest romp in the three-dimensional wasteland of space.
Well, the wait is finally over. Announced last week at PAX West was the return of the space RTS genre. Homeworld 3 is in development.
Blackbird Interactive is still the driving force behind Homeworld and has the reigns for Homeworld 3, while Gearbox still serves as publisher. Strangely, Homeworld 3 is getting crowdfunded rather than Gearbox footing the bill. This might just be because crowdfunding is a thing these days and why bother with the traditional method of game financing when you can just get some pre-orders going several years in advance?
Of course, it might also be a sign that Gearbox is in some tight financial straights, but we doubt that will be the case once Borderlands 3 goes on sale.
Homeworld 3 will be a proper sequel to Homeworld 2 with events following directly after that game. Currently in pre-production, the Fig campaign has a bunch of great images to peruse as well as Homeworld 3’s announcement trailer to entice fans of the series.
So far, the campaign has raised $506,410 with 26 days left on the clock. It seems likely that Homeworld 3 will break a million bucks, with the rest of the game’s development likely coming from outside investment or Gearbox’s bank account.
No release date yet, but as Homeworld 3 is still very early on in its development cycle, expect it to be a few years at the very least.
Source: Engadget
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