Maia, the ambitious sci-fi god game, is funded with three days to go

Good news, god game fans: Maia has reached its Kickstarter target of £100,042, with just under three days to go. Things were looking a bit hairy for Simon Roth's impressive sci-fi god/management game for a while there, as only a few days ago there was still around £30K left to achieve. Thankfully, two things happened in the last couple of days that seem to have made all the difference: TotalBiscuit stepped in to make a recommendatory video , and several other indie devs gathered round to launch the Indie Hug Bundle .

In an act comparable to crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, an indie bundle met a kickstarter page as The Indie Stone (Project Zomboid), Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV), Puppy Games (Revenge of the Titans), Rob Fearon (Death Ray Manta) and Dull Dude (of unreleased game Battle Cave) stepped forward to donate copies of those games to Simon, who then promised them to anyone who pledged £56 or above. (Incidentally, the GLaDOS tier is now sold out.) Thankfully for Simon, for fans of god games, and even for fans of 70s sci-fi, like me, the move has paid off - at the time of writing, Maia's now raised £101,444 and counting.

The next stretch goal, at £101010, adds cats and dogs. "Aid your colony's defenses with some fluffy dealers of death."

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.