Starfighter, Inc. takes ‘Babylon 5’-style space combat and adds corporate skullduggery

The X-Wing and TIE Fighter games do a lot of things right, but when it comes to modeling physics in space, they are about as accurate as a Stormtrooper firing his blaster. But one of the masterminds behind LucasArts’ space-sim classics is going to change that with his next game.

Today, Impeller Studios — which just announced its very existence on April 14 — threw the tarp of its first game. It’s Starfighter, Inc., a space sim set in the near future, where humanity has reached the stars and corporations, not governments, make the rules. And it’s heading to Kickstarter, entering a spacefighter sim arena in which fans, not game publishers, set the terms. The recent Elite: Dangerous was an early Kickstarter success with $2.4 million in funding, while Star Citizen has raised more than $77 million as of this report.