Maybe I’m behind the times, or maybe I’m spread thin like butter across too much bread, but I completely missed hearing about Stars Reach, a new sandbox MMORPG from, among others, Ultima Online’s formative lead designer Raph Koster. The game was successfully funded on Kickstarter back in March of last year, ultimately raising $816,922 USD.

It would take too long to recap all the development news and coverage that Stars Reach has received since then, but the game’s overview page does name-check Ultima Online rather prominently:

Brought to you by the designer of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, STARS REACH is all about fulfilling the promise of what online worlds can be.

It’s a single shardless galaxy full of living planets to explore, settle, and rule with your friends. Thousands of planets and space zones, each persistent whether you’re online or not, all connected into a single galactic online multiplayer game.

It’s a massively multiplayer sandbox RPG with a deep skill tree horizontal progression system, dozens of professions, and no classes, gender locks, or annoying rails. If you decide you want to change your build, just let some skills fall out of practice and go learn something else. It’s built for immersing you into an alternate world of adventure.

This huge galaxy won’t get in the way of having instant fun, though. Download your brainwaves into a clone body close to your friends. Have fun in a five-minute session – or spend hours decorating your house. It’s a modern online game that respects your time and preferred ways to play.

Reading the remainder of the overview, I’m reminded a little bit of No Man’s Sky; Stars Reach will feature similar ideas around exploration, resource harvesting, and establishing a presence on planets. It also emphasizes that the game’s world — worlds, really — will be fully modifiable as well as persistent:

Our shared multiplayer environments are fully persistent, and fully modifiable. You can sculpt the terrain, harvest and replant bushes and trees, and change where water flows to irrigate a desert and make it bloom. Combat gets better when you can drop a cliff face on your enemies. Crafting gets better when you carve underground mining complexes. Farming gets better when seasons and soil quality matter. And making a place your virtual home has never been this expressive before.

And of course, there will be economic features like crafting and trading, as every good sandbox should have.

Stars Reach is currently in a post-alpha state, undergoing round-the-clock playtesting (presumably by its backers). The game can also be wishlisted on Steam, and is expected to become available as an Early Access title there early next week.

So…anyone else planning on checking it out?