Humans love building things. Machines, gadgets, tools, toys; the list goes on. Now, with the power of modern technology, we can even build software that allows us to build more things within it. A build-within-a-build—buildception, you might say. Puns aside, this is exactly what the new indie-title Plasma is all about; giving engineers the tools they need to create.
Dry Licorice, the studio behind the new title, describes Plasma as being “a creative engineering playground where you can build any device you can imagine.”
Players can construct machines, robots, vehicles, robotic animals, and even “whole game worlds”, among a variety of other creations that are left up to the imagination of the builder themselves.
Plasma offers a variety of toolsets and menus, which have all sorts of different values, toggles, and other components to allow the creator set the exact parameters they need in order for the object they’re interacting with/putting together to function as intended. This system seems similar to that of Nintendo’s Game Builder Garage on Switch and Media Molecule’s Dreams on PS4.
On that note, just like those titles, Plasma is going to allow creators to not just hold their amazing achievements to themselves. Rather, the community will be able to share new projects via the Steam Workshop, whether it be singular objects or entirely new custom game worlds.
Plasma is promising to offer a robust toolset that makes sense, focusing on harnessing the power of “intuitive robotics, physics and visual programming tools” in a way that also allows the experience to be fun. Hence, it’s no wonder why the studio is referring to this as being “an engineering sandbox.”
Similar game creation titles on PC like Roblox already exist, but Plasma seems to be trying to streamline the experience enough so that casual creators won’t be inundated with overly-complex tools and operations that would make them frustrated.
Of course, as is proven time-and-again anytime a game features user-created content, there are bound to me a heaping number of outrageously ambitious projects that spawn from this made by extremely talented individuals. Thus, don’t be surprised if you see YouTube videos aplenty popping up with users showing off or featuring some wild Plasma-powered creations.
Especially when it comes to its ability to design game worlds within the game itself, it will be very interesting to see just how much a creator can get away with in terms of being able to faithfully recreate existing titles within Plasma. Again, this is something Roblox can already do (and rather well), and Dreams is also rather robust with this, too.
Dry Licorice has not yet revealed an exact release date for Plasma as yet. For now, it’s simply labeled as coming some time in “Early 2023”. That’s not too far from now, as of the time of publication. So, expect to jump in relatively soon. It will be an Early Access title, however, and will remain so for “at least a year or two”, says the studio. But, it’s hoping to build a steady community to help it shape the final version of the game.
You can take a deeper look at Plasma on its Steam page.