Cloud Imperium Games announced that a new Free Fly Event will open the gates of Star Citizen to non-backers for a week this month.
We hear that from August 15 to August 22, prospective players will be able to access the game without having to pay for any of its packages or ships to celebrate the traditional Ship Showdown popularity contest among the game’s vehicles.
During the event, everyone will be able to try out the top-16 ships running for the title of fan’s favorite, which should provide a large enough hangar to try out most aspects of the game currently in development.
All you’ll have to do to participate is to register an account on the official site and then wait for August 15. As soon as the event start, the client download area will be open to all, and then you’re off to the races.
On top of the Free Fly news, we get an interesting video introducing Narrative Director Dave Haddock and Assistant Narrative Director Will Weissbaum.
Interestingly, Weissbaum used to be writer and narrative coordinator for Sony Santa Monica’s mysterious sci-fi game directed by Stig Asmussen reportedly code-named “Internal-7” or “Darkside,” which was canceled in 2014, resulting in extensive layoffs affecting the studio’s staff.
At that time, those affected weren’t just let go without support, and Sony Santa Monica organized a job fair to introduce them to other local studios. Weissbaum almost didn’t visit Cloud Imperium Games’ booth because the studio wasn’t hiring for the narrative department, but he ended up going anyway, and that’s how he got the job.
You can watch the video below.
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded multiplayer open-universe sandbox space simulator that has been in development for over a decade. It’s directed by Chris Roberts, who is well-known for creating the beloved Wing Commander series.
It has received over $715 million in crowdfunding ($715,739,370 at the moment of this writing) and counts 5,306,908 registered users, albeit many of them aren’t paying customers, as they register accounts to participate in the Free Fly events like the one mentioned above
A single-player campaign named Squadron 42 is also in development, boasting a star-studded cast including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, and many more well-known actors.
At the moment, the developer is working on Alpha 3.24, which will bring a lot of highly-anticipated features. Later this year, they’re expected to release Alpha 4.0, which should introduce a whole new star system and much more.
If you’re interested in Star Citizen, you may want to learn to fly. To that end, you can check out our handy guide on how to get started with flight simulators.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
