By Nathan Grayson on November 7th, 2012 at 2:00 pm.
I don’t throw around 1800s nautical phrases that have semi-recently been co-opted by pop culture lightly, so understand that I’m coming from a place of the grimmest possible seriousness when I say this: Europa, I like the cut of your jib. Not to be confused with Europa Universalis, this first-person explorer has risen from the charred space-remains of a 7 Day FPS project by a developer named Quick Fingers. The original mixed strikingly sparse visuals with crafting and a bit of shooting, but the full version looks to focus more on exploration – which is a-okay in my book. Oh, and then there’s this bit from the creator, which is bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-okay in my book: “Think Fallout 3 in space (but dont really think that or you might get disappointed when it’s not 100 hours long).”
While the opening’s unfortunately confined (not to mention ostensibly centered around a man who never quite made it through Walking College), Quick Fingers took to Reddit to explain more about the game’s scope. Interestingly, unlike a lot of ambitious projects from solo devs, Europa’s actually handcrafted – not procedurally generated.
“Its about exploration of Europa, one of Jupiters moons, it’s not a procedural universe type gig. So you won’t be leaving to explore any other planets any time soon… [It'll be] heavily story focused, but with open world gameplay once on the surface of Europa.”
“The original concept I made had some shooting in because it was for an FPS challenge. However, the full edition really leans towards adventure over action, and I’m toying with the idea of removing weapons altogether and trying to make that work.”
Which is a pretty bold move, but I certainly can’t knock Quick Fingers for it. True first-person explorers are in short supply outside Proteus and a handful of brief art games, so I’d love to really dig into a world with a bit more to offer. And of course, anything that’s heavily inspired by Fallout 3 has my undivided attention until it’s either a) bad or b) a gigantic scorpion. From the sound of things, it’ll be out sometime next year. Goodspeed, Mr Fingers. Goodspeed.
07/11/2012 at 14:08 pblackburn says:
The latest be-knocked-down-by-explosions sim. Have to say though, I like the look of it.
07/11/2012 at 14:10 Lolmasaurus says:
Make sure you put on your HEV suit first though, I mean, WPB, of course.
07/11/2012 at 15:24 SlappyBag says:
You got there first, dang.
I’d suggest they don’t make the suit orange for this single reason =P
07/11/2012 at 14:08 Lolmasaurus says:
I can see myself playing this.
07/11/2012 at 14:35 The Random One says:
No, you can’t. It’s first person.
07/11/2012 at 14:52 Sparkasaurusmex says:
hahahaha
07/11/2012 at 15:22 Lev Astov says:
But he could actually see his own body when he looked down!
09/11/2012 at 04:41 dsi1 says:
You saw him, he looked down and saw himself!
Truly this is the future!
07/11/2012 at 14:09 TsunamiWombat says:
No, all games must have shooting. Always and forever. The public will play only this. Other genre’s are a myth perpetuated by old people who never had an ecksbawx. How will you get your Sonysoft certification without shooting, you mad fool!
07/11/2012 at 14:10 AmateurScience says:
This, Miasma and Sir being funded.
Today is a good day for first person not shooters. Happy.
07/11/2012 at 14:32 eks says:
I would love it if this becomes a trend. FPNS.
07/11/2012 at 14:21 celozzip says:
ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
07/11/2012 at 15:13 Xardas Kane says:
First thing that came to my mind too.
07/11/2012 at 20:58 Mirqy says:
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE
08/11/2012 at 13:00 cunningmunki says:
Haven’t heard that in a long time. Gave me goosebumps.
07/11/2012 at 14:26 TsunamiWombat says:
Do you remember the song we used to sing,
I can’t remember the name, what was it;
07/11/2012 at 14:38 frightlever says:
Was it this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POv-3yIPSWc
07/11/2012 at 18:39 neonordnance says:
It’s the sound design– the music, the beeps and bops, the ambience– that really make this one worth keeping an eye on.
Great soundwork can make a good game a classic!
07/11/2012 at 14:31 The Random One says:
I’ve been burned once too many by games that have been ruined because the devs thought there had to be shooting. I wish him the best at this task (and also hope he may be able to recognize if he needs to put shooting back in).
Of course, he didn’t have to put shooting to enter the game on the 7DFPS anyway. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/19/best-games-of-7-day-fps-that-dont-have-any-shooting/
07/11/2012 at 14:41 frightlever says:
In the original prototype for Space Invaders you weren’t able to shoot back. It was less a game, and more a bleak reflection on futility. But they didn’t think that would get people to shove 10p’s in the slot.
07/11/2012 at 15:54 Casimir's Blake says:
I would argue that Quick Fingers should not remove all shooting elements from Europa, unless he wishes to make it an out-and-out adventure. Nothing wrong with that approach, but having a little combat to spice up the exploration would not be unwelcome.
Heck, Quick why not take a few elements from System Shock 2? Europa doesn’t sound a million miles away from being similar to it.
07/11/2012 at 14:50 buzzmong says:
Quite interesting, I’ll have to keep an eye on this as it develops.
I know it was only an intro section on the ship, but it looked very System Shock II, which is a good thing mind.
07/11/2012 at 14:50 Sparkasaurusmex says:
Strange video- it mostly shows boring, grey hallways. Weird because I assume the game won’t actually have much of that
07/11/2012 at 14:55 matveev.sergeev says:
Well, that’s a good game, what can I say. Will be interesting to watch as it develops.
19an89_p3tr@inbox.ru
07/11/2012 at 14:56 Kein says:
Dear Esther?
07/11/2012 at 14:57 Guernican says:
If only there were value in the sentence “I like the jut of her Cib”.
07/11/2012 at 15:12 Stevostin says:
Hooked
07/11/2012 at 15:16 PsychoWedge says:
I really like the premise of this. Exploring a moon in our solar system with exploring meaning exploring and not constantly shooting at people or aliens or alienpoeple is far more interesting to me then, say, Halo 4.
07/11/2012 at 15:20 CMaster says:
I always thing that the FPE – First Person Engineerer should be a genre. Rather than fighting the monsters, you have to rivet metal panels to things to keep them out, for example. Or repair/build things to cross obstacles. Etc. Of course, you can always smack things in the face/shoot them with the rivet gun etc if combat is involved.
I’ve got the beginnings of a design doc for a game based around this concept too…
07/11/2012 at 22:01 Skabooga says:
Unfortunately, Moonbase Alpha is single-handedly responsibly for killing the Third-Person Engineerer genre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo
But there might still be hope for the first-person counterpart. (Really just looking for an excuse to post that video again.)
07/11/2012 at 15:30 Wurstwaffel says:
I wish developers would stop trying to convey a high fidelity style with low fidelity graphics.
Other than that it could be alright I guess. I like the keyboard controlled computers.
07/11/2012 at 16:26 kristian says:
I wish people would stop complaining about graphics, so game developers could actually focus on making their games enjoyable experiences.
07/11/2012 at 16:27 wtfmates says:
Don’t worry Ser Greyson, since you managed to stop yourself from photoshopping the Majoras Moon mask onto the image, I’ve done it for you. I couldn’t not do it.
http://i.imgur.com/dibzm.jpg
07/11/2012 at 17:05 adonf says:
That ain’t no moon! (It’s Jupiter)
07/11/2012 at 19:32 Sakkura says:
That’s no moon. It’s a space planet.
08/11/2012 at 10:25 rustybroomhandle says:
It’s actually a cosmic fart.
07/11/2012 at 17:32 Hendo says:
John, I would seriously reconsider that later point. If a game had my undivided attention before turning into a giant Scorpion, I would probably pay even MORE attention to it, not less.
07/11/2012 at 18:21 DestructibleEnvironments says:
Why even mention Fallout 3, when there are games like the System Shocks.
It looks like an interesting game so far!
08/11/2012 at 18:32 Atrocious says:
It’s obviously System Shock with the HEV suit added. I agree, it looks nice!
07/11/2012 at 19:30 sabrage says:
I refuse to play this because Unity is only fit for browser games.
11/11/2012 at 06:28 ghost55 says:
Right. Because the fact that the latest release supports DX11, games like Wasteland 2 are being made with it mean absolutely nothing.
11/11/2012 at 09:43 jorygriffis says:
Yeah dude, this is really silly. Unity is awesome.
07/11/2012 at 19:41 GunFox says:
None of what went wrong with that ship made any sense at all.
07/11/2012 at 19:49 KruskDaMangled says:
I like that he’s aiming for low key violence (assuming he has it at all). When all that’s between you and horribly suffocating is a relatively fragile space suit, one thinks long and hard before doing anything violent or dangerous.
Which doesn’t mean I would be against the possibility of a game like this where you use your Space Survival Knife to stab some poor schmo or whatever.
07/11/2012 at 20:50 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
Low violence sounds good. Don’t mind a little of it though, for added danger and excitement.
07/11/2012 at 20:59 Chromie192 says:
How is this like Fallout 3?
08/11/2012 at 00:03 Runs With Foxes says:
First person. No other games have done that.
08/11/2012 at 03:37 Milos says:
It’ll never catch on.
09/11/2012 at 02:08 Quick Fingers says:
thanks for the comments! Woo didn’t expect this little video to get on rps! I said fallout 3 in relation to the open worldiness and sense of adventure once your on the surface of Europa. Which, as you can plainly see, is not demonstrated at all in this video :) Anyway, it was a flippant reply to someone on reddit and I’m scared now because that’s what all the sites have picked up on :) but pressure is good it helps me work faster.
09/11/2012 at 14:53 mittortz says:
Look like something that I would love to no end if it’s executed well. And honestly, I’m pretty pissed off that no one else has done this yet in the modern gaming world (and if they have, please alert me immediately).
You have my anticipation!