If anyone has an idea for a better, less sensationalized title, feel free to share.
Disclaimer: I like Hazeron, it just may be the most unpolished game that I have ever seen. (EDIT: Removed Hazeron comparison from title.) Continuing on...
Dual Universe is yet another ambitious space game, with their goals being most similar to Shores of Hazeron. Really, that's the best description I can think of. A more proper and polished game in the same genre as Shores of Hazeron. With the goal of a player-driven universe where almost all of the content is player-created.
Dual Universe is a Continuous Single-Shard sandbox MMORPG taking place in a vast Sci-Fi universe, focusing on emergent gameplay with player-driven in-game economy, politics, trade and warfare. Players can freely modify the voxel-based universe by creating structures, spaceships or giant orbital stations, giving birth to empires and civilizations.
Their features page lists: (Explanations mine, the bullet point 'titles' theirs.)
- "Team Up or Go Solo" - Ships can be piloted solo or multi-crew, with different people focusing in areas such as weapons, navigation, and repair.
- "Seamless True MMO Universe" - The universe is "single, continuous, [and] undivided". Really this just seems to mean one server, and vaguely implies little loading screens.
- "Emergent Gameplay" - Players act as the driving force behind any kind of politics present in the game, with gameplay emerging from that. Fairly self-explanatory.
- "Voxel Building" - The system used for constructing space vessels, stations, and buildings. Based on little what I've seen, it looks fairly standard - a bit like Space Engineers.
- "Scriptable Ships and Constructs" - The game will allow use of the Lua THEY CALLED IT "LUA" INSTEAD OF "Lua" WHAT KIND OF DEVELOPERS ARE THEY scripting language to program any in game ship or other construct to do a variety of actions. If you're unaware, Lua is pretty popular for "ingame" scripting, being used for Gary's Mod, Roblox, and for mod frameworks for plenty of games.
- "Realistic Ingame Economy" - "Create a bank or start your own company." The economy ingame is influenced extremely, if not created, by the players. Players can harvest and sell resources, initiate market exchanges, and more. This seems to be an entirely player-based economy with little to no "premade" things such as marketplaces.
The game is currently being kickstarted, although development appears to have been started far before the kickstarter, as they already have a team and lots of pretty stuff to show for the game. Their goal is $557,818 (€500,000) and as of this post, they've reached $338,364 in pledges with 24 days left to go in the kickstarter.
I highly recommend visiting their kickstarter for a more detailed explanation of the game mechanics - they even have some gifs showing mechanics such as voxel building.
More features, but this time from their kickstarter: (Titles and details mine)
- Blueprints - Create blueprints for constructs such as a ship and mass produce them in factories.
- Mining - Explore planet surfaces for minerals, but a scanning mechanic allows players to discover much richer resources underground.
- Territory Control - Groups claim territory on planets via 1km hexagon tiles "via the deployment of a Territory Unit." Groups can fight over land to gain the ability to use it themselves.
- Combat - Mechanics are in place for a more 'organized' combat experience, and to encourage large battles that both parties participate in. In addition to this, there are also safe zones where PvP combat is disallowed.
- Character Progression - Characters progress in a method very similar to EVE - players choose a single skill to train over real time and gradually specialize their characters.
There's also a
Community Portal that allows the creation of groups and the like, though there's not really any game for these groups to participate in yet.
So, in summary, Dual Universe is a very ambitious game that seems like a cross of Shores and Hazeron and EVE.
Will it deliver? Time will tell - I don't recommend getting too hyped for any game of this scale. While the team does seem fairly non-awful with 15 people and claims of prior experience, there is never any telling of the future in this case.
LinksDual Universe WebsiteKickstarterCommunity Portal