Star Citizen Enters Alpha 2.0

Star Citizen, despite being one of the most successful crowd-funded projects… ever, really, has been the subject of growing controversy and concern as the game, which was promised to be released last year, is still being worked on behind closed doors. Now, no one is worried it’s a scam--we’ve seen way too many pictures, screenshots, and playable alphas to suspect that much--but there have been concerns that the company is perhaps overreaching its goals and misallocating funds.

Not enough of a concern to stop giving it money, though. Star Citizen is fast approaching the $100 million mark as far as money raised, and to celebrate this seemingly imminent milestone Robert Space Industries is celebrating with the release of STAR CITIZEN ALPHA 2.0!

The crux of the Alpha 2.0 is that all of those little gameplay snippets we’ve been seeing, isolating what’s supposed to be one whole, coherent experience, is finally being put together into one whole, cohesive experience. Players will explore a single sector of Star Citizen’s promised gigantic universe, wandering around a planet called Crusader to engage in ship battles, FPS battles… jumping battles? Here’s the official list of features:

EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) – drift out of your ship’s airlock and venture into the void of space and back
20+ random encounters – combat and exploration (lost wrecks and abandoned space stations)
Quantum travel – travel in ships through the vastness of space at 0.2 the speed of light
New flyable ships including the Constellation, the Retaliator and the Vanguard.Large world tech – explore extremely large expanses of space seamlessly, without loading screens
Locations to explore:

One planet (Crusader)
Three moons
Three distinct space stations
One repair/restock station
Nine comm arrays

Wreckage to scavenge and never-ending battles in the Yela asteroid belt
…and much more

Sounds pretty amazing. And apparently, this is just one small part of what will eventually be the finished product. Well, I for one envy those who get to play around in this lil’ sandbox, and look patiently forward to to the full release of Star Citizen in 2045.

Let’s be realistic on that one.