After months of thinking (and apparently drinking from what they’ve said), Peter Fibæk and Jon Nielsen, two friends from Copenhagen, Denmark, decided that the best thing they could do with their lives right now was to make a 4X MMO game with sci-fi elements. I say “elements” because they don’t propose your traditional space opera grand strategy 4X experience right from the start. At the beginning the game should unfold a bit like “SimCity and Civilization” and only at later stages you should be able to go for the stars as a space-faring civilization- “eventually your village could encompass an entire planet and your empire half a galaxy (…) the game ends with the space-faring time period”.
The devs propose “The Universe” a MMO game where “friends are not required”. They explain that their intention is to go after a more casual browser gaming experience, where you don’t need to team up with people to achieve the game’s goals, although that seems to be possible nevertheless – “you do not have to work together with your neighbors to prosper (but it helps)”.
They propose an interesting concept for research with a “large and intricate” technology tree where breakthrough techs takes a long time to come by (or not). Instead of having to wait for research to finish you can just buy it out and even trade techs with friends.
They also talk about a somewhat different micro-transaction business model (yes, they will go that road) but say that although “money can buy happiness” the game will be free and all players should be able to enjoy it equally well – “the game will not require any payment to play to its fullest extent”. I’m always suspicious about this “we have micro-transactions but they aren’t really required to win the game and have pleasure playing” (my words here). But, let’s give these guys a chance.
Jon and Peter have preferred (or only got access to) Indiegogo, a crowdsourcing platform like Kickstarter for example. However Indiegogo has a twist. With their funding campaign type Jon and Peter are able to keep “all they can get” while in Kickstarter campaigns (for example) you are only allowed to keep the all cake or nothing. They ask for $4884 and even have a rigorous breakdown of the costs backing up this number. They currently accumulate $262 with 56 days to go.
So, are we going to help these guys up? I’m in for $10.
Head on to their Indiegogo funding campaign page if you want to help too.
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I love the idea of this game. Starting off building on your planet like “Civ” or “Simcity”, only to then advance into space sounds great! However, once I read it was going to be a browser type game, I was a little disappointed.
The good thing about this is you don’t need friends to play. Most browser games REQUIRE you to have x amount of friends in order to advance or do anything, and since most of my friends don’t play the games I do, I’m S.O.L.
The micopayments sound like a typical browser game, but they said, “… will not limit the free players or the game experience”. Their words were, “Micropayments will only be intended to give ingame cash advantages.” So my guess is that if you don’t pay it will be a much slower game for you, than the ones who pay to get extra cash.
Either way, part of me is interested, and the other part very skeptical. I think they have a good idea going, but with browser games, I have been disappointed in just about all of them. I hope this one is different.
I will throw them a few bones, I hope they prove me wrong.
Same thoughts here. Hopeful but skeptical at the same time. But enough to make me donate. The research part intrigued me, in a good way. The quest for a “different” micro-transactions system also gave me hope. SimCity + Civ is always good no matter where or when :)
Looks like they are going to start development earlier than expected. In their fb page they announced some engine and other code donations from 3rd parties. Good for them. I hope they go all the way.
I’m one of the developers on this game and wanted to let you know that our intro-video is finally ready :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DNHNb0_MDc
Also, based on your comments, we’ve edited the text on the indiegogo-campaign page to try to better explain the various parts.