Although Cloud Imperium Games’ (abbreviated to CIG from now on) single-player project still doesn’t have a release date, we can already see some of it, albeit not officially.

Star Citizen and its single-player part, Squadron 42, are still in development, and we’re surprised to learn that the game duo still doesn’t have an approximate release window, even though CIG has already raked in tens of millions of dollars from patient gamers in the form of community funding. The studio doesn’t want to show anything from the game, but now, the gameplay, running in the game’s engine, has been leaked to the internet.

Both halves of Star Citizen are in development hell, but we can see the state of Squadron 42 from the internal use footage. An alpha was released on PC in June, so there’s no beta yet. The video isn’t pre-rendered footage, not footage CIG has created for marketing purposes only. There is some proper gameplay in one of the Star Citizen ships towards the end, but the problem is the frame rate (let’s say it’s choppy, which we’re sure will be fixed), but the exciting thing is in the video description. The uploader says that this is footage from last year! The short gameplay is at least promising.

What could have happened in the last 10-12 months? Has there been performance fine-tuning, and have there been visual upgrades? What systems have CIG focused on? We can’t answer these questions, as the company is profoundly silent about the game, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if CIG doesn’t say anything until the end of the year. One problem is patience will run out, and not everyone will wait another year for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 to be released.

And let’s not forget that Star Citizen requires many more systems and technology because of the MMO genre… so if Squadron 42 is moving this slowly, Star Citizen could be even slower in its development.

Source: WCCFTech