Welcome to Starlight Inception, a first-person / third-person space combat experience. It contains a single-player campaign, single-player Fly Patrol (tower defense), and several multiplayer options. The inspiration for Starlight Inception was the old space sim games that we loved as kids, but with a more sophisticated, modern sensibility.

Starlight Inception is the new game from Garry Gaber, twenty year game industry veteran and formerly of LucasArts, where he acted as the project leader of Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns.

In Starlight Inception, you’re a young space fighter pilot assigned to the U.S.F. Midway (SCVN-41) one hundred years from tomorrow. The game will have more than 30 hours of single-player gameplay, and you’ll be able to explore your mothership between missions — see your bunk area, report to the captain on the bridge, and visit the Pilot Ready Room where you receive your mission briefings.

Starlight Inception will also have a hangar bay with more than thirty different fighters, bombers, and transports, each with customizable weapons and equipment to choose from for the missions. The fighters are future versions of modern day fighters like the Lightning, Raptor, and others, and they’re made to work in both space and planetary environments.

There’s a deep story in Starlight Inception that plays out through the single-player campaign missions. It revolves around World War IV. You’re facing several factions of a larger organization which doesn’t agree with a United Earth — they want a national, not a world government.

There are ten single-player missions, each with unique tasks and objectives. In one mission, Operation: Render Hope, you’ll escort transports to the surface of Earth and into the city of Chicago so they can render medical aid to civilians. This is an escort mission that will involve repelling enemy fighters while tagging the civilian areas. Render Hope definitely has a Choplifter vibe.

In Starlight Inception, a fully integrated, second campaign has been implemented in the form of a 3D tower defense game, called Fly Patrol. You face waves of enemy fighters and capital ships advancing through Einstein-Rosen bridges (or E/R bridges), which are artificial wormholes. You can hold them off with just your chosen fighter, and/or deploy turrets for defense.

There are several multiplayer modes available in the full version of Starlight Inception as well. You can select from deathmatch, capture the ball, and football mode. Each has unique challenges and have been lots of fun for the playtesters so far.

The music of Starlight Inception has been composed by three time Grammy nominated American composer David Arkenstone. David had previously contributed music to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

There are a lot of Vita specific features in the game, use of the accelerometer, the gyroscope, the front touch pad, and the sticks.