Starfinder: Afterlight launched its Kickstarter today—and let me tell you, I am actually extremely excited for this game. Sure, I'm now officially one of those annoying Pathfinder 2e guys who will tell you about how good the three-action system is (no but really, it's better), but Afterlight is actually shaping up really nicely so far.
That's not to say I'm calling it here and now that it'll be perfect. It's developer Epictellers Entertainment's first ever game; CRPGs are hard to make; and it's still very, very early days. Starfinder: Afterlight is the first proper videogame to use Starfinder 2e—built upon Pathfinder 2e's framework.
So far, Afterlight's developers have been a tad coy. Trailers are mostly (gorgeous-looking) artwork with voiceover layered atop it, and the Steam page only has a few brief stills, so I was curious to see how it looks in motion and, honestly? I think the folks at Epictellers are being a little gunshy.
What I saw wasn't terrible at all—the environment, a space cantina bar with flickering neon signs, looks pretty and well-detailed. The character art (and voice-acting) is solid. And while combat animations are a little rough around the edges, everything else seems promising: We've got a vibrant, colourful setting, and a UI that occasionally dips its toe into the stylings of Persona with comic-bookstyle cutouts tearing across the screen.
When it comes to the environment, it's clear that Epictellers has snagged some great talent, too—it doesn't look bad at all. The cel-shaded textures and particle effects remind me a lot of Wildstar, and it's clear there's a strong art direction thrumming under the entire thing.
Mind, I can understand the hesitation. Epictellers is a 30-person team making a game far smaller in scope than Larian's recent juggernaut—though speaking with Ricard Pillosu, the studio's co-founder, I'm told getting together the right talent wasn't much trouble.
Space: The first frontier
"It has never been a burden to find the right people," Pillosu tells me. "We have a very open process.
"We've got a good mixture of young people and some people that are very experienced. I hate to say that actually, the state of industry, sadly, makes it easy to recruit nowadays … I'm happy—or we are happy—that we are giving a chance to other people, that some of the other studios are not giving more chances to."
It has, indeed, been rough out there. While Larian's been growing ever-larger, opening new studios and projects—Pillosu confirms that, sadly, "It's the first time in my life working in the videogame industry that I can say that recruiting is not the problem."
In his past experience, "recruiting was the number one challenge. But this has been the opposite. When you say to people that 'we are doing a CRPG, it's going to be in Starfinder, we are a team of 30, we do not plan to grow, and we are full remote?' It's actually an easy sell."
And it's not as though Starfinder: Afterlight has the world set against it, either. It's being supported by Paizo itself, and Epictellers has even bagged Neil Newbon (Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3) as its voice acting director—which Albert Jane, another co-founder, says has been a genuine boon to the script.
"He's just very approachable and very easy going. He's been helping a lot with something we've never done before—so it has been great to have someone that can, in a polite British way, not tell you 'you're doing something terrible', but [instead] say 'okay, maybe we could do something like that' … And you're like, 'Okay, he's saying that this is shit. Let's just change it.'
"[He's] able to not only direct, but also when we are in session, he puts his experience as a voice actor in place—to put people in the right mindset … He's not only directing the voices, but he's also looking into the script and [asking] 'how do you guys feel about changing this or that?' We only have kind words for his work."
In which case, why Kickstarter? Well, Epictellers Entertainment could use the extra cash to help expand its voice acting cast—and toss in more ancestries and feats from Starfinder 2e's massive array of character options. But they aren't looking for a miracle. As a matter of fact, they're kinda scared of one.
Too much of a good thing
The sense I get from Jane and Pillosu is that they're keen to express the Kickstarter isn't some hail-mary they're all desperately betting on, simply an excuse to put a little more elbow grease into the game. As a matter of fact, they seem more weary about the idea of skyrocketing success.
"Actually, I'm more scared about huge success than a bit of failure," Pillosu admits. "I would prefer not [to have it]. Because you get too much money and then you get too many expectations on you, and we are very set in stone that we don't want to be a big team—and the same goes for early access that if it goes too well, we could go into a very long loop of early access."
Jane, too, is worried about the perils of early access games ballooning in scope, and doesn't want the same to happen here: "Something that we've seen many times in other projects is that you get a ton of money, and suddenly your release date goes—because you promised so much—to two years from the day that you promised that your game was going to ship.
"That's something that we want to avoid at all costs; It's our first game. It's a new studio with a new game. We need to make this game happen with the data we already have in mind."
As a matter of fact, Jane draws an (altogether reasonable) line in the sand—no matter what happens, they're not going to heap a bunch of features atop their pre-existing plans, even if the Kickstarter does gangbusters:
I think that whatever we do, we have our stretch goals that we don't think we are going to be adding more even if things take off."
"Even if we add more things to the Kickstarter, it's not adding five more people into our team, or delaying the game six months—it's something that we can add on top of what we have … I think that whatever we do, we have our stretch goals that we don't think we are going to be adding more even if things take off.
"This is the scope that we wanted to make the game, our first game. We won't promise co-op—multiplayer, that's out of the scope. That's not going to happen, even if we get like, $5 million that's not going to happen."
Paradoxically, though, it's this exact trepidation that kind of gives me hope that Starfinder: Afterlight could be a banger, eventually. Especially since Pillosu seems to've hit the nail on the head when it comes to player choice in CRPGs:
"Every time we do an internal playtest, we look into what people would like to do based on the narrative—and if they cannot do it, we try to add it. We try to get that game that never says 'no' to you. We have a reduced scope, we're a small team, but within our boundaries? … We will give you an option.
"60% of the options of the game will be produced by us—and then the rest is: We do early access, we do internal playtests, we do friends and family … and then we'll watch people."
Despite all the trepidation, I'm very excited to be watched, and I'm likely not the only one. At the time of writing, the Kickstarter's only been live for just over an hour—and has made around £56,000 out of its £65,000 goal. A little shy off five million, but it looks like this game's got lift-off. Starfinder: Afterlight will be heading into early access in 2026.
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