With Frontier's November 5-launched Kickstarter crowd-funding project - `Elite Dangerous' - nearing its end over the weekend, the £1.25million funding goal has been reached by the campaign; thanks to the support of more than
21,000 backers.

Over the last two months of its Kickstarter campaign, Elite Dangerous - a 21st-century sequel to the 1980s space sim classic Elite - has steadily collected a funding of more than £1.28million from nearly 21,740 backers; thereby implying that the game is now set to proceed to the full development stage.

With the Elite Dangerous Kickstarter project having hit its funding goal with days with less than two days to go, the developers are now promising that if the funding reaches £1.4million, they will release a Mac version of the game, and also offer free expansions for the base title to the £80+ pledge givers. In case the funding touches more than £1.5 million, ten more playable ships will be added to the game.

About Elite Dangerous, David Braben - founder of Frontier Developments, and the Elite co-creator - said that he wanted to make the Elite sequel for quite a long time because the game is "an amazing space epic with stunning visuals, incredible gameplay and breath-taking scope."

Further adding that `Elite' has thus far been "worked upon by a small team as a `skunk-works' activity in the background," Braben said: "Nevertheless, we have been preparing; laying the technology and design foundations for when the time is right. And that time is now."