Night Dive Studios has revealed its pitch for a "complete remake" of the 1994 classic System Shock on Kickstarter. Asking for crowdfunders to reach its lofty $900,000 goal, it has already reached over $180K at the time of this writing. With 29 days days to go, it's off to a stellar start.
The remake will be rebuild the groundbreaking story-driven game using the Unity Engine, modernizing the graphics, enemies, weapons, and locations throughout Citadel Station. Terri Brosius as SHODAN will reprise her role with new VO lines to be recorded. Everything from the user interface to the puzzles will be updated "to capture the spirit of what the original game was trying to convey, and bring it to contemporary gamers."
To help convince you of their passion and commitment to the project, the studio—spearheaded by Robb Waters, the original concept artist from System Shock and BioShock—has released a pre-alpha "proof of concept" demo of the game available through Steam, GOG, and Humble Store.
To score a digital copy of the game on Steam, Xbox One, or GOG, you will need to pledge $25 or more in the early bird special. The Digital Collector's Edition ($50 or more) comes with the digital soundtrack, tri-optimum handbook, and both System Shock 2 and System Shock Enhanced. Those with deeper wallets can spend $350 or more to become a corpse in the final release of the game, $500 or more to become a named enemy, or $750 or more to become a Citadel crew member.
At the grandest pledge tiers, you can score yourself a custom System Shock Razor gaming laptop ($5000 or more) or even get a ticket to an exclusive private party ($10,000) in Portland, Oregon with Stephen Kick, Robb Waters, and other developers on the team.
Beyond the $900K goal are various stretch goals that go up to $1.9M (with some goals being occluded). Reaching these goals will include everything from vending machines and an RPG levelling system, to additional death cinematics and a remixed soundtrack to be sent to every backer who contributed more than $30.
Night Dive Studios hopes to launch the System Shock remake in December 2017 for Windows PC, Linux, Mac, and Xbox One. There's surprisingly no word on a PlayStation 4 SKU.
