It's the precursor to that game that people thought was vaporware because they didn't read the blog posts but in reality was always being worked on by this one guy in his spare time. Remember? Infinity: The Quest For Earth? Yeah, it's still a thing. The devs thought it wise to take smaller bites before demoing the full capability of the I-Novae engine, so they're scaling it back to have this one game take place in one (realistically-sized) solar system with realistically-sized planets and truly seamless space-to-atmosphere transitions (not like that No Man's Sky BS that covers the transition with some clouds and fog and labels it as "seamless"). TQFE is still something they have in their sights, but they want to use I:B to raise some capital to fund it. They even added a nice touch of aerodynamics to change your flight mechanics when you're in atmosphere vs. in space. I thought that was a really cool implementation.
Anyway, they're running a kickstarter right now to try and raise capital to finish the project SOONER. And they've already done a malarkeyton of work, so this isn't just an idea that they're looking to fund. There's a tangible product already made that they want to build upon.
There are lots of demos and press reviews and live gameplay streams going around online, so some people actually have access to the pre-alpha prototype in order to show the world what's been going on.
No, it's not vaporware.
No, it never was vaporware.
No, it's not an E:D/Star Citizen/NMS/Whatever clone
No, it's not a gimmick
Here's some eye candy.
Official Trailer (go to 2:24 to get a sense of just how forking huge it is)
The Evolution of the I-Novae engine (Because it was never dead in the first place, asshat)
Demonstration of ACTUAL seamless space-to-planet transitions (Because even after 10 years, that malarkey is still awesome)
