Blue-Collar Astronaut Sails Very, Very Carefully onto Kickstarter

A game styled after the hand-drawn art of Maki Naro, about the struggles of gainful employment, Blue-Collar Astronaut is a comedic adventure with multiple challenges, ridiculous controls, and a fair bit of throwback to arcade games of days past. Drawing inspiration from Lunar Landing and Missile Command, the developers at Mutated Software have created a game that they describe as “easy to learn, difficult to master.”

Hand-drawn animation features include planets made of mattresses, traffic cones as guides for flight patterns, and even explosions that are as varied as the ways in which an explosion can occur. There are multiple game modes, from Time Attack (where you must collect tokens to keep the clock from running out) to Free Mode (just fly around and destroy things at your leisure). Additionally, Mutated Software hopes to engage players with social commentary on debt and the real cost of education. In fact, the game is basically a training course in flying to prepare the in-game character for the service industry. Don’t let that deter you – there’s plenty of comedy to be had, as well as quite a bit of replayability due to the variety of game modes that are finished and in progress.

In their Kickstarter campaign for Blue-Collar Astronaut, Mutated Software is asking for $15,000 in funds to complete the game. Pledge tiers go from $5 (get your name in the credits and receive regular project updates) to $5,000 (there is only one, and it includes every other reward, a producer credit, and apparently you will receive a birthday card every year). Since Blue-Collar Astronaut is part of IGM’s Crowdfunding Initiative, those who pledge at the $60 level will receive a yearly subscription to The Indie Game Magazine, a custom ship skin, and all previous reward tiers. Many people are reluctant to pledge to a campaign without a budget – well, Mutated Software has one. You can also download the demo (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) right here on IndieDB, and decide if it’s something you’d like to support.

If you’re not able to pledge to the campaign, check out Blue-Collar Astronaut on Steam Greenlight, and if you like what you see, vote for it to appear on Steam when it’s complete. You can contact Mutated Software via Twitter and Facebook, or read their devblog on Tumblr.