The following is our latest blog post, originally posted on March 11th, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.
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There’s a little known fact about game development that goes like this: about three-quarters into the development timeline, things start to fall into place at a different rate, and it feels like the game comes together at a much faster pace than ever before. This is where Worlds Adrift is at now. All of a sudden, the things we always expected the game to do are happening. Systems and mechanics fit into one another, unfolding a myriad of possibilities we couldn’t have envisioned before. It’s quite possibly the best time ever for any dev team, when our efforts pay back two or three-fold.
It’s now possible to craft any shape of ship you want, rather than using the standard hull formats we had as placeholders. Creatures around islands take notice when you chop down a tree, and they don’t seem to like it very much. Flying manta rays hear the roar of nearby engines, and home onto them with the intention of making it stop. An explorer’s knowledge provides new crafting abilities and items to use. The male character finally makes an appearance. Flying a ship into a lightning storm proves quite a challenge to even the best of navigators… And so on.
Pairing all these new features with a horde of bugfixing, particularly following the shortcomings of our last playtest (Alpha3), has been the order of the day for the past few weeks. We’re steadily getting the game to a much better state, ramping up for the next few tests that should come in rapid succession, until we’re able to leave the game live and uninterrupted. After that, well, it’s showtime.
But just before the skies of Worlds Adrift are filled with every fan of the game, we’ve got a surprise for you in the next couple of weeks. People have been asking for something to play with whilst the game is under development, and we’ve prepared a special tool that will both be cool to play with, provide a taste of the game and also help make Worlds a better universe for us all to adventure in.
As far as we can tell, it will be the first time a community will help shape an online world before it’s live for us all to play in, so it should be a fun experience for everyone!
Henrique Olifiers
Gamer-in-Chief
@olifiers