Kickstarted sci-fi flight sim Starlight Inception coming to the PS Vita in December

What would you get if you took great space combat games of the 90's like Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Freespace 2 and mashed them up with some tower defense gameplay?

The answer is Starlight Inception, an indie darling of a Kickstarter game which is due out for the PS Vita in North America this December.

Unlike the classic space combat games from which it draws its inspiration, Starlight Inception is a distinctly modern sort of game that allows for a seamless transition from 3D space battles to planetary/lunar atmospheres in a way that gamers 20 years ago could only dream of.

Naturally, there's still a lot of pure ship-to-ship dogfighting to be had in the inky black of space - a post on the PlayStation Blog notes that Starlight Inception will deliver 30 hours of single-player gameplay along "several multiplayer options".

There's also an interesting single-player "Fly Patrol" mode that introduces an element of tower defense gameplay as you position turrets to protect your mothership.

As the final icing on the delicious sci-fi cake, composer David Arkenstone (who you might know from World of Warcraft Cataclysm) is responsible for the game's music.

We don't have a firm release date or price for this one yet, but Escape Hatch Entertainment notes that it "won't be priced unrealistically" and that it won't be a free-to-play game.