What is Worlds Adrift? The Developer Explains it All

The fine folks at Bossa, who developed Surgeon Simulator and I am Bread, are working on a new game called Worlds Adrift, which we reported on not too long ago. They’re developing it in cooperation with Improbable, doing much of the heavy lifting with regards to the technology the game uses.

The studio released a dev blog today to talk about the role Improbable is playing in the game’s development. They also talk about the team’s ambitions and challenges in developing this open-world, airship-faring, exploration-friendly multiplayer game. 

What is the game, exactly? Here it is in their words:

“First, Worlds Adrift is set in a persistent, shared multiplayer environment. That means anyone who plays the game will be in the same enormous world. (Due to the increased importance of low latency in a game with physics, however, the current plan is to have separate servers for different geographic regions—we can’t overcome the speed of light, I’m afraid).

“Secondly, the world will live and breathe. Worlds Adrift will not be an MMORPG as we know them. There are no quest hubs and no NPCs standing around forever, waiting to give you tasks. There are no low-level zones and high-level zones, because there will be no levels. There are no static, choreographed environments and events that replay for every new player.

“Instead, there will be creatures that eat and live and die, and trees that grow, and ruins that hold secrets, and wreckage that rusts and rots, all inside a world that doesn’t revolve around you, but that can be permanently affected by your actions. You are a part of the world, and it’s up to you to decide which part that is, and how it relates to all the other parts.

“Lastly, the world will behave according to believable physics. You can see in our latest video (and can read about the specifics in Rodrigo’s blog post last week) that ships are constructed of pieces — each of which can be snapped off if there’s a strong enough impact. Much of the world will also behave like this: creatures, wreckage, loose objects on the ground. And of course there will be plenty of rope physics involved in player movement.”

Excited? I am.