Kickstarter pitches tend to be long, and some folks are in a hurry and would rather cut to the chase. If you want to give the demo a try before you read another word, access our Steam Page and have at it!

Do you like alien outlaws, colossal capital ships, and seamless space-to-ground dogfights? Have you ever dreamed of working in the employ of a murderous interstellar mega-corporation? Does the phrase “cyberpunk in space” get you hot and bothered? We’ve got just the game for you!

Galaxy in Turmoil is a multiplayer combined-arms game set in a brand-new universe. It’s all about endless arms races, corporate espionage, and blasting up on the enemy faction and taking their stuff. In its final incarnation, the game will feature up to 64-player battles across a range of planets, space stations, and remote outposts, covering an assortment of team-v-team combat situations.

Galaxy in Turmoil features flexible scenarios where you, the player, decide how best to complete your mission. Need to take down a shield generator to advance your team’s objective? Sneak in on foot and plant some remote explosives or hop in a starfighter and carry out bombing runs. If you’re so inclined, you can even grab a tank and storm right into the enemy base. Want to disable that pesky capital ship that’s scraping the upper atmosphere? Strap into a pilot seat and soar up through the clouds. The choice is yours!

The galaxy is at war, and the stakes have never been higher. Fueled by their distrust of the growing Vori Federation, Comm Industries, the single largest defense technology company in the galaxy, decides to strike first. The Comm seek to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction, called the Panzu Egg, and the Vori would sooner get splattered than let the Comm lay their hands on it.

When the Comm attack, the Vori military responds as though they’ve been waiting for this moment for years, and a full-scale war ensues. Conflicts erupt on nearly every civilized planet in the galaxy with no end in sight. The Panzu Eggs are scattered across the stars, and whoever controls their mysterious power becomes the de facto ruler of the galaxy. The loser faces potential annihilation.

While the Vori Federation is a thousand planets strong, Comm Industries makes up for their lack of numbers with seemingly limitless technology. This war could last for generations, and trillions of intelligent lifeforms are caught in the crossfire. When will it end, and who will survive?

The multiplayer component of Galaxy in Turmoil is just one slice of a much deeper universe we hope to share with you. This game is our first step to building a franchise, which will include both dynamic multiplayer experiences and gripping, character-driven singleplayer stories. Stick with us, because this new universe is going to be a real trip!

Frontwire Studios, LLC, is an independent game developer headquartered in the United States with a team spanning three continents and multiple countries. Some of our devs have worked in the AAA industry, while others bring indie experience to the table. Others have brought experiences from completely different fields.

We may be a motley crew, but what unites us all is our passion for games, both as an entertainment platform and as a storytelling medium. That love for gaming is what has allowed us to maintain the studio in the absence of startup funding.

Most of us haven’t yet made a name for ourselves in the industry, so we’ll spare you the padded résumés and boring bios. Instead, we’re offering you something more: a fully playable conceptual demo as proof that we’re really committed to this. So, go check out the demo on Steam!

How is this project funded?

Hopefully, by players like you! Up to this point, everyone in our studio has worked as a volunteer. Any overhead costs have come out of our own pockets.

If we want to finish a game of this scope, let alone make it good, we’re going to need proper funding. Since Galaxy in Turmoil began as a fan project, born out of a fan community, it’s only natural for us to return to that community and ask for the help we need to make this project a reality.

When GiT releases, the entire multiplayer game will be free to play, and the only purchases we’ll offer for real-world currency will be purely cosmetic. These cosmetic sales will be our primary means of funding expansions to the game.

We envision GiT as a living game with years of planned content, and all we need is the support to make it happen. In order to continue rolling out new content, we first need to create the base game with all core features working properly. That includes a full customization system, which allows players to purchase new skins for their characters, weapons, and vehicles, as well as emotes. Before we can get in a state where we can monetize the base game through cosmetics, we’ll need a meaty chunk of funding up-front, so that’s what Kickstarter is for.

We weren’t kidding about that demo. You can try it right now! All you need is a Steam account and a decent computer. Check out our Steam Page to see minimum system specs and access the demo.

What is a “conceptual” demo, you ask? This is our way of saying it’s a glorified proof-of-concept to give you an idea of what our team of generalists can do without funding. Now, imagine how far we could go if we could pay people to be available full-time and hire new, more specialized team members to help us push the concept to a higher standard.

More established studios might not have to go this far in order to secure funding for their next project, but we felt like we, as industry upstarts trying to create something that is a herculean effort for a startup, needed to prove ourselves to the community. All along, we’ve refused to take a single donation until we had released something playable.

Yes, we know there’s a LOT of stuff still lacking in this demo. Netcode needs to improve before we can showcase the 64-player battles we intend to have. Vehicles are a bit wonky. Art and design need refinement. Maps and game modes are experimental and not completely balanced. Pretty much every aspect of the demo is missing a ton of stuff it needs to remain engaging. That’s where you come in.

What’s in the Demo?

Two factions. Three maps. Four game modes. Let’s break it down:

• Full-scale infantry combat, including a basic Class System. Choose between the Ranger, Engineer, Demolitionist, and Assassin classes.
• An early prototype of our Vanguard System. Spend points you earn in the match to play as unique and powerful characters.
• Basic air and ground vehicles, fully accessible by infantry. Get in and out at will!

Game modes:

Invasion

The Comm Industries Tower Ship has launched an assault on a Vori-controlled world, aiming a dangerous weapon at the ground far below. But the Vori Legion never comes to the battle unprepared, having previously installed powerful shields to protect their assets. Until the shield generators are destroyed, the Tower Ship’s cannon will be unable to damage its objectives.

From their starting point in the Tower Ship, Comm starfighters must descend through the planet’s atmosphere to target Vori shield generators on the ground. This may not be an easy task, as Vori bases are host to powerful anti-aircraft turrets that can shred a ship in seconds. Should the Comm succeed in taking down all the shields, their cannon will begin warming up to fire. Successfully firing the cannon means victory for the Comm.

For the Vori, losing shields isn’t automatically the end, as the Tower Ship’s warm-up phase leaves it vulnerable. Before the cannon fires, Vori fighters may fly into space and target the cannon itself. Even with no shields left on the ground, the Vori will have a few precious minutes to launch an all-out assault on the Tower Ship and steal victory from the Comm. Easier said than done!

Siege

In Siege, the defending team’s base houses a rare and valuable artifact. The attacking team must hack through security before they can take the payload for themselves. Defenders must prevent or intercept hacks.

Once all consoles are breached, the shield protecting the artifact vanishes, leaving the objective vulnerable to a full-on assault. To achieve victory, attackers must carry the artifact to one of their Extraction Zones, while defenders try to stop them until the timer runs out.

Domination

In Domination, opposing factions compete for control of the area. By capturing Control Posts on the map, players boost their team’s total capture score and open up additional team spawn locations for further conquest.

The longer a team holds a Control Post, the more points it earns. Victory goes to the team that first reaches the target points threshold.

Team Deathmatch

What shooter game would be complete without a little team-based mayhem? Two teams square off against each other. Your objective? Destroy all enemies!

Available demo maps:

Amalgam III

A mysterious moon with massive towers that appear to have fallen straight out of the sky. Full disclosure: Amalgam is an experimental map for prototyping game modes, technical art, and other crazy ideas, so it probably won’t make the cut into the full game. But you’re free to keep it in your headcanon!

Melusium City: The Bowels

Melusium is an ancient, hulking space station that houses an expansive seawater aquarium. A recent change in private ownership has transformed it into a modern hub of business in the Vori Federation. While the newly-built Melusium City looks clean and inviting on the outside, its core, referred to as the Bowels, has already begun to rot and rust after only a few generations.

The Ring of Vitellus

The remnants of a moon that was destroyed during a battle in a distant age. Now the moon is but a ring of debris encircling the gas giant Vitellus. The Comm Tower Ship drifts through the ring, only to be ambushed by the Vori Legion. A tense battle ensues as the Vori board the Tower Ship in search of Panzu Eggs.

You’ve seen the conceptual demo, and you’re probably wondering how the full game will differ from it. Our goal is to take what we’ve done in the demo and substantially improve virtually everything you see, then start adding new features from there. All the stuff that’s not quite working will be polished, remade, or, if necessary, cut. While some might assume, based on the state of the demo, that we could just slap on a customization system, tweak a handful of things, and then hit publish, it’s not so simple.

All in all, the work we have left before the base game is ready for release exceeds the amount of effort we’ve put into the demo. That is, if we want the game to last.

Here’s a summary of the main work left to do before GiT receives a proper launch:

General Improvements

• Big refinements to every aspect of the game!
• Better Animation System – With the right setup, we can make some sweet improvements to our animations.
• Better Audio – Fewer placeholder sounds and a better audio system!
• Better UI – Not only will the user interface have more useful features to help players keep track of the latest happenings, but the visual aesthetics will also be refined.
• Better Graphics and Upgraded Models – The art style will become more consistent with proper funding!
• Better Codebase – Now that we’ve moved through the prototyping phase and have a clear plan for future expansions, we intend to recode the entire base game. This will result in more stable networking for 64-player battles, as well as generally better game performance.
• Physics-based Vehicles – Gone will be the wonky controls and vehicle collisions in the current demo.
• Rebalanced Vanguard Characters – At launch, each faction will get two dedicated Vanguard characters, plus access to wildcard characters with no set loyalty. More will be added over the lifetime of the game. The Vanguards currently in the demo will come back looking snazzier, and they’ll have new qualities we weren’t able to give them in our prototype.

Upgraded Game Modes

Invasion

In the demo, this game mode was hard to balance due to a lack of certain contextual features we plan to include in the full game. By allowing changes to the environment based on the stage the match is currently in, we can better balance team advantage to ensure that the fight remains fun and fair. This applies to everything from available spawn points to vehicle access.

Domination

Control Posts will no longer simply be on/off switches. Rather, the process of capturing a CP will go through multiple stages, from weak control to strong control. Each added level of control brings greater advantage, so there’s an incentive to maintain full control of your CPs.

Team Deathmatch

This one will remain mostly the same at launch, but it will receive upgrades as we progress through our roadmap, simply by virtue of all the new features and options future development will bring.

Siege

In the full game, there will be a few different versions of Siege:

• Siege – Simplest mode. Hack consoles and take down the shield to extract the egg, much like what we have in the Bowels demo map.
• Progressive Siege – This involves a series of modular objectives that must be done before the egg can be taken. It can include breaking down defense barriers with physical force, securing an extraction route, etc. In the demo, Tower Ship Siege is an early example of this.
• Special Siege Scenarios – Instead of “Steal the Egg,” these scenarios have a different win condition. For example, “Bomb the Capital Ship Core” or “Rescue Big Belugah.” More of these scenarios will be developed as we add new maps.

New Features

Some key features to be added to the game include:

Customization System

Express your personality in-game! All characters, vehicles, and weapons can be reskinned with purchasable cosmetics. Set up your favorite character skins in the main menu, then access them from the loadout screen. Bling-a-ding, baby!

Accolade System and Account Progression

What shooter game would be complete without standard badges, medals, and player titles? Earn these by completing in-game challenges and other methods.

New Infantry Class: Infiltrator

The Infiltrator excels at sneaky strategies. Its signature weapon is the Drone Launcher, which can be used to place bombs, trip wires, and other devious devices.

Character Ability System

Access rechargeable abilities, like stealth cloaks, defense buffs, or faster movement speed. It all depends on your class!

Turret and Vehicle Repair

The Engineer class becomes more useful with a method of properly repairing damaged vehicles—and even some objectives!

New Weapons

In addition to the refinements we’ll make to the demo weapon options, new weapons will also be added to class loadouts. These include dual pistols and other fun stuff.

Missile Turrets

Tired of having to dumb-fire your flak cannons? Now ground defense includes the mighty Missile Turret. Lock on and fire!

Squad System

Organize your team into smaller squads to handle various mission objectives and angles of attack.

Map Upgrades

Most maps from our demo will return in the full game, just with some major upgrades wherever possible. We’re not just talking about better art, but a refined sense of focus thanks to more polished game design. Base funding includes:

Planet Zaiden

Replacing Amalgam III is Planet Zaiden, a world with many grasslands and savannas in the mid-latitudes. The planet is recovering from a snowball ice age that killed off much of its flora, so most of the world’s plants are evolved from grasses. Pastoral people, known as the Tribes of Zai, shepherd their livestock between towering mesas that were once sculpted by glacial runoff.

This map will include both small villages and military bases, as well as high-rise outposts on the tops of Planet Zaiden’s mesas. When broken down into its sub-maps, Zaiden features both open-air and close-quarters combat areas, making it work well for Invasion, Domination, TDM, and Siege. Post-launch game modes, such as Dogfight TDM and Sabotage, will also find a home here.

The Comm Tower Ship

This demo map only got to be about 30% of what we wanted. It will be greatly enhanced, expanded, and reworked in the full game. Like in the demo, it can be integrated into larger maps for outer space escapades, but smaller sections may also be used for modes like Team Deathmatch.

The Ring of Vitellus

An enhanced version of the demo map for Tower Ship Siege. Will also be compatible with future game modes, like Dogfight TDM and Fleet Commander, that occur later on our roadmap.

Melusium City – The Bowels

Like the close-quarters demo map, only better. We originally made this map for our suspended singleplayer demo, only to switch it over to multiplayer after the fact. In the spirit of making it a better multiplayer map, there may be modifications to layout and level functionality, not to mention new art assets and level design tricks to make it flow better.

Melusium City – Financial District

Another close-quarters map that began as part of our singleplayer plans. It was a bit too linear to make into a decent multiplayer map for the demo, but we have a plan to adapt it to MP.

Disclaimer

In the event that a non-critical feature causes a hangup that would delay launch beyond an acceptable time frame, Frontwire Studios reserves the right to ship the game without that feature. We also reserve the right to modify, cut, and replace certain features in the spirit of making a better game, as what sounds good on paper doesn’t always work in practice!

If we reach our funding goal, SCORE! Game gets made. But if you’re feeling generous, consider donating more so we can knock some of these stretch goals off our list. Hitting the stretch goals means the game will ship with more features and improvements straight away, making Launch Day sweeter.

Starfighter accessibility leaving you grounded too often? Now aerial vehicles can take a copilot with them. And if that wasn’t enough, this stretch goal introduces multi-passenger armored dropships that can transport a chunk of your team to the planet surface in a single trip! Passengers need not be idle, as the dropship comes with turret pod seats that turn the vehicle into a flying fortress.

This upgrade includes:

• Aerial vehicle passenger system.
• Dropship class vehicles.
• Better missile locking and scrubbing tech for dogfights.
• Better ship animations with more moving parts. Think ailerons, landing gear, and other cosmetic effects that go with an agile starfighter.
• New starfighter classes with extra loadout options, such as multi-lock Horde Missiles and Decoy Rockets to help with dodging enemy missiles.

This update creates a passenger system for all ground vehicles. You know what that means? Drive-bys, baby! Take a friend on your hoverbike and watch him gun down your enemies as you zip through their base. Or hop into the back of the Land Racer, our new multi-seat fast transport vehicle, and place land mines while your buddy drives.

Features in this upgrade include:

• Ground vehicle passenger system.
• Land Racer class vehicle.
• New tank classes with different weapon types for both driver and passenger—and even rocket thrusters for vertical traversal!

Following the first starship upgrade, this one comes with even more functions, as well as a new game mode just for space battle aficionados, called Dogfight TDM, a ship-only team deathmatch. Spawn directly into your ship of choice and fly into battle!

If dogfighting isn’t your thing, this upgrade also includes quality-of-life improvements for our other game modes, such as bomber ships for taking out objectives.

Upgrade includes:

• Dropships can now magnetically pick up most ground vehicles.
• New Vehicle: Bomber Ships with Cluster Bombs, Air Mines, etc.
• New weapons added to starship loadouts (to be specified during development).
• Dogfight TDM Game Mode available on the Ring of Vitellus and Planet Zaiden maps, as well as future large-scale maps.
• Vitellan Troposphere Map – A new map specially designed for Dogfight TDM. Fly through the atmosphere of Planet Vitellus, weaving through towering clouds as you combat your foes.

Attack of the bots! Now the game comes with infantry-based AI, as well as the ability for hosts to set the number of bots in a match. These computer-controlled enemies can’t pilot vehicles or do objectives, but they will at least put up a fight! Bots will be further upgraded in later stretch goals.

Included in this update is a new game mode specifically designed to make the most out of bots: Last Refuge. In this mode, a small team makes their final stand against an overwhelming enemy onslaught, defending their post with their lives. Though their numbers are small, their firepower is the very definition of OP.  Truly a battle to keep the historians talking.

This update includes:

• Infantry bot AI.
• New map! Melusium City: Redlight District – Better bring your ID! Planned game modes include Last Refuge, Siege, and Team Deathmatch.
• Last Refuge Game Mode applied to all previous Melusium City maps.

The ground game gets more interesting with the Armored APC class of vehicle. This heavy multi-seater serves as a mobile spawn point for your team. Spawn directly into one of the APC’s passenger seats and start shooting, or hop out any time you’re ready.

But wait! APCs are just icing on the cake. This update also includes AI for ground vehicles. Now enemy and ally bots can drive all ground vehicles, as well as hop in to assist their human drivers. With this update, ground-based maps can be fully enjoyed with fewer players.

Here it is, FPS fans: the feature you’ve always wanted! Full first-person options for infantry and vehicles. We’ll model first-person weapons and animations with as much care as the third-person stuff, and you’ll even be able to stare longingly at the heat stains inside your ship cockpit, if that’s your thing. Need we say more?

New challengers have arrived on the scene! This update introduces two new troop classes—the Warlord and the Missionary—as well as more loadout options for our established classes.

Warlords are true tanks, able to leverage their high health against restricted mobility to unleash devastating gatling drive fire on their enemies. In contrast, Missionaries prefer a more elegant approach, using their technological powers to perform feats that look like magic. See them fire off energetic blasts of light from their palms or deploy an array of homing orbs to track their foes, all while levitating above the floor.

Following the first Infantry Upgrade, we’ve got more! This update includes:

• Bots now pursue objectives in all game modes.
• New mobility options for infantry, such as energy gliders or double-jump packs.
• New gadgets for infantry, such as deployable shields.
• One new Support-class Vanguard character for each faction.

War has spread like an infection across the galaxy, and the balance of nature is in dire straits. Only one fighting force can reverse such a widespread environmental disaster: the mysterious group of machines known as the Blithers. Programmed to preserve life at all costs, these unlikely heroes have come to put a stop to the Comm and Vori armies.

The Blithers are a full-featured military power that can stand head-to-head with the other factions, but their goals are unique. Hence, their introduction comes with a brand-new game mode, called Sabotage.

In Sabotage, the Blithers have but one goal: to bust up all the tech that’s enabled the Comm and Vori to wage their bloody war. The more drive refineries, corporate networks, and capital ships the Blithers manage to smash, the greater their chances of saving the galaxy. But no one should expect the Comm or Vori to just sit around and let the attack happen, and the Blithers’ do-not-kill imperative makes an exception for enemy combatants. As with all things in Galaxy in Turmoil, there’s gonna be a fight.

Along with the Comm and Vori, the Blithers will be featured in future scenarios beyond Sabotage.

This upgrade includes:

• The Blithers faction, complete with infantry and vehicle classes, weapons, Vanguard characters, and customization options for all. Available in Sabotage, Domination, and Team Deathmatch, as well as some post-launch game modes.
• Sabotage Game Mode applied to preexisting maps, such as Planet Zaiden, Melusium City, and the Comm Tower Ship.
• New Map: Pixie-Tech HQ – Close-quarters brawl inside the headquarters of Pixie-Tech, the largest tech company in the Vori Federation. Trash the place in Sabotage or steal their eggs in Siege!
• Large Ship Destruction – Take down frigates and even capital ships with concentrated fire—or get inside them and rig them to blow. This mechanic will first be introduced in Sabotage, but it’s also a feature we’re eyeing for other scenarios, such as Invasion and Siege, as well as a post-launch game mode we like to call Fleet Commander.

Stretch goals aren’t the end of our plans for Galaxy in Turmoil. As mentioned previously, we want to keep this game evolving for years after launch. That means new weapons, characters, maps, game modes, and other content. As long as players keep coming back to the game, we’ll keep working to enhance it.

Multiplayer is only the first phase of our plans. Our long-term goal is to create singleplayer games, and much of the planned content for multiplayer will help build these experiences. We have a very clear vision of how this project will lead to our end-goal. In the hopes that you’ll be willing to share in our ambitions, we’ve distilled our plan down into a single roadmap graphic:

While this list doesn’t include many small-scale features we have planned, and while some of this stuff is subject to change, we hope it allows you to see that, by backing us on Kickstarter, you’re not just funding the base game or even the stretch goals; you’re helping us kick off a long-term plan for our studio. We hope to still be making games in ten years’ time, but we can’t do it without you!

By contributing to our fundraising campaign, you’re also buying yourself an opportunity to snag some cool swag. The more you donate, the more you get!

Reward Tiers

Donation Bonuses

• 2,500 Backers – We’ll produce a monthly newsletter documenting our production exploits.
• 5,000 Backers – We’ll produce and release a free one-shot webcomic to give you some more backstory into the Comm/Vori conflict.