>>5335Well the Kickstarter was done after they'd already spent the bulk of the budget (around $1 million). The Kickstarter was used to likely get further investment, as it wouldn't have been enough to finish the game.
As for my input on the game…
Well, I came up with the core mechanics, wrote the story, sourced both the mecha designer and composer as well as lead the design for two years. After I left, the controls changed, time limited transformation was shoehorned in and the gameplay balancing generally went south.
Originally the strike suit was intended to be quite uber, much like in Omega Boost in fact, but it all changed when the emphasis went on making the capital ships practically invincible. This ruined the balancing and nerfed the player's ability to make a difference, the corollary of which being the creation of endless escort missions and appalling difficulty spikes.
The sad thing about all this, was that these problems were entirely solvable through design (as in basic variable changes). There were no technical hurdles that created these problems, instead just wilful and likely pigheaded stupidity on the part of the design team.
The original version of the game was more akin to the flying parts of Warhawk, mixed in with elements of Gundam One Year War. In that the player could choose when to transform into mecha but still keeping a more arcade sensibility (as direct input rather than a simulated physics system, which is what was later put in sadly).
The whole reasoning behind this was that jousting in flight games is rather tedious and the mecha mode would break this stalemate (as the mecha could move laterally through space).
It was originally intended as a console game too, with the shift to PC happening after I left as well.
There were also seven very different strike suits, with specials, as well as far more and varied missions.
Anyway, next time I make a mecha game I'll do it with my own goddamn money. Thankfully I'm now living and working in Tokyo too, so at least I won't have to contend with the same level of functional ignorance when it comes to low level gameplay design (plus they get what mecha are here - in the West it's often just a long painful facepalm).