A team of developers is looking to make a single-player city-building game that seems like the anti-SimCity—and they're asking for $250,000 on Kickstarter to make it happen.
Called Civitas, the project promises to be a SimCity clone that you can actually play offline, which might come as welcome news to fans burned by the recent launch disaster.
As the folks behind Civitas write:
Out of all of the possible types of games our fledgling studio could pick as our first project, why did we pick a city simulation title as our first effort?
Easy, it was out of a combination of how much we loved some of the original city simulation games back in the early PC days and our displeasure with the direction the new SimCity has taken under the iron fist of EA. We don't agree with the removal of single player, the lack of terraforming, lack of modding, and above all them forcing the worst form of draconian DRM on its players known as the "Always On-line" requirement. They are seriously not going to let you play their game if you aren't online. Anyone that has ever been forced to play under that DRM knows how terrible it is. Not only can your internet access stop you from playing, if EA is having any server issues (Yeah those never happen right?) you'll get a nice fat error message instead of your game starting. Forget playing while traveling or anything. This is not a good recipe for a simulation game. EA should really just rename it SimFarmVille and get it over with.
Ouch! Go check out the Kickstarter if you're interested in hearing more about the potential game and its plans.
Civitas - Plan, develop, and manage the city of your dreams! [Kickstarter — thanks, Dazza!]