The goal is to have it feel a bit like Firefly," says Notch. "You can try to land on a planet but you mess up and, instead of having the ship just explode like it would in real life, the landing gear gets broken. Then you have to try to fix that by finding resources. Instead of the adventure being flying from here to here, it's: I set the destination, oh god I hit a small asteroid and the cloaking device broke. I think they really nailed that kind of emergent aspect in FTL. "
I hope this doesn't end up having a monthly subscription fee, I really want to try this game.
http://0x10c.com/