Starfinder: Afterlight Melds Baldur’s Gate 3 Rules with Guardians of the Galaxy Charm
Starfinder: Afterlight is a party-based CRPG from Epictellers Entertainment that uses the rules and tone of Paizo’s science-fantasy TTRPG Starfinder. The game puts you in charge of a misfit crew traveling the Pact Worlds, lets you create a Starfinder character, and aims to translate tabletop mechanics into a computer RPG experience.
Overview
Starfinder: Afterlight will follow the rules of Starfinder 2E, and it aims to be accessible to both longtime tabletop players and newcomers. Epictellers plans a launch in 2027. The main plot is expected to take about 40 hours, while finishing every sidequest could double that time. Players start at level 1 and typically finish around level 7 or 8.
More details about the project are available on the developer site: Epictellers’ Starfinder: Afterlight page.
Companions revealed
Epictellers revealed two playable companions that will join your crew. One is Tycho, a Ysoki Operative with a mechanical arm and a punk aesthetic, who will be voiced by Inel Tomlinson. The other is Kole, a Vesk Soldier voiced by Fred Tatasciore, inspired by 1980s action-movie tropes.
Tycho was once a great inventor but has fallen on hard times. Ricard Pillosu said he’s the character who will tell the rest of the group to “stop hugging each other, come on, let’s get serious here.”
Kole’s backstory ties into Starfinder 2E lore: the Veskarium have gone to war with the Azlanti Star Empire, and Kole’s family pressure pushed him toward the front. Instead, he wants to be an action-movie hero. His outfit mixes John McClane’s tank top with Indiana Jones’ pants, and he chews lollipops as a visual nod to 1980s cinema. “He has a big heart,” Pillosu says. “He’s really like a small kid in the end, with big guns, a bit suicidal sometimes.”
Gameplay, rules and character creation
The first step for players is to create a character using Starfinder’s rules. At launch, Epictellers will offer the game’s eight classes and seven ancestries, and the team wants to add the remaining two ancestries from the Starfinder Player Core with additional voice acting later.
Epictellers says the game will make tabletop mechanics approachable: players can opt to have the game automatically take reactions like attacks of opportunity, and many checks will be resolved by dice rolls happening in the background. Character skills and spells will matter for exploration and puzzle solving. Your ship functions as a basecamp where you can control companions, interact with them, and pursue romantic relationships.
Epictellers plans to fund extra content and voice work via a crowdfunding push. They will launch a Kickstarter campaign in October: Starfinder: Afterlight on Kickstarter.
Development, scope and release
Paizo selected Epictellers — a first-time CRPG studio — to adapt Starfinder after working with other developers on previous projects. Epictellers co-founders say the team is inspired by high-quality CRPGs and by Larian’s work, but they set a realistic scope for their smaller studio.
Ricard Pillosu commented on comparisons to Larian’s recent work: “That game is impossible to reach in terms of scope and in terms of how masterfully it’s done.” he says. “We feel that you do not need to do Baldur’s Gate 3 in order to do a valuable CRPG and find an audience for it. We are aiming for a quality that is more like the Divinity games that Larian did before, which is a super high bar. … We are inspired by Larian at every point.”
Finally, Epictellers says there is potential for ongoing DLC and expansions as Paizo provides more material.
