Those of you who were reading the site in February will recall my astonishment at Love, the forthcoming procedurally-generated moderately-multiplayer online world by one-man studio, Eskil Steenberg. Steenberg is a man of remarkable talent, both artistic and technical, and what I saw on his laptop screen at GDC impressed me more than any high-profile release of recent years. A wondrous, impressionistic MMO world that facilitates player creativity and encourages co-operation, that looks incredible and sounds too ambitious to be true. It’s a bold, brave project of independent game development. We’ve got the first moving images of Steenberg’s project after the jump.
[If you see “this text will be replaced” you need to turn off your adblocker.]
You can see the smoky visuals, the player-editing landscapes, the combat, the abstract entities of the Love world. We’ll be asking Steenberg to explain his game in a little more detail in the coming weeks. In the meantime read my previous conversation with Steenberg, and visit his site.
The game, naturally, will be done when it’s done.
15/10/2008 at 19:53 Srejv says:
Really looking forward to this one.
15/10/2008 at 19:54 nabeel says:
Oh shiiiiii I can’t contain myself, and I haven’t even watched it yet.
nabeel
15/10/2008 at 19:57 sana says:
I fear that the engine capabilities and art style are the only interesting things about that game. Looking at that small combat bit: Edgily looking, poorly animated.. uh, things shooting lasers at each other in some kind of mediterran town? What? Come on.
15/10/2008 at 20:01 Jim Rossignol says:
sana: Read my original piece on the game.
15/10/2008 at 20:02 Bas says:
There’s still time to fix things. This is just one guy working on it, and when he realizes he’s not happy with it, he’ll change it (probably.) Looking forward to this!
15/10/2008 at 20:03 Stupoider says:
This game looks very interesting. Keep an eye on this, folks!
15/10/2008 at 20:05 thesombrerokid says:
where’s the video!?
15/10/2008 at 20:11 cyrenic says:
“This text will be replaced”
You big tease!
15/10/2008 at 20:11 treaclepeople says:
Seems to work in IE but not Firefox for me.
15/10/2008 at 20:14 Sandoval says:
It seems to me that the quality of the graphics has actually gone down (significantly) from the last batch of screenshots. Those were smooth and stylized, while these look jagged and jumbly. Compare:
link to quelsolaar.com (old)
with
link to quelsolaar.com
Maybe the new filters just lose something for me, but the first thing looked like a really neat handpainted doodle, while the new one looks like a low-tech 3D render with a semi-transparent funky overlay. Ah well.
15/10/2008 at 20:15 Sam says:
Works in Firefox here, in Linux no less…
(I also have slight dissonance with the laser/medieval styling conflict. But it does also look lovely, so…)
15/10/2008 at 20:19 cyrenic says:
Looks like adblock was causing the missing video issue. Apologies to the RPS overlords, I run it at work :P.
The game looks very interesting. The character graphics will probably need to be a bit sharper for gameplay purposes, but even at this early stage things look pretty good.
15/10/2008 at 20:22 Corbeaubm says:
That looks so different from anything that I’ve ever seen in computer gaming. The description of what he’s hoping to create is something that I’ve been wondering why nobody has done before, and always sort of assumed that it was impossible. We shall see, but for once I’m actually seriously interested in an MMO (and a subscription-based one at that).
15/10/2008 at 20:23 thesombrerokid says:
it’s bloody beautiful!
15/10/2008 at 20:24 dartt says:
More of this please.
15/10/2008 at 20:25 Theory says:
That was really quite something. The screens made me worry that it’d be impossible to tell what was happening on-screen, but as soon as they start to move everything falls into place. Bravo!
I thought the combat was OK. It’s not strictly one “setting” – it only looks Mediterranean because that’s how the voxels (are they voxels? Look like it.) were placed.
15/10/2008 at 20:27 Theory says:
Good catch. The appropriate whitelisting code is:
@@http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ads/swfobject.js
15/10/2008 at 20:27 Theory says:
*quickly clicks a few ads*
15/10/2008 at 20:28 kyrieee says:
It’s neat but will it be fun?
15/10/2008 at 20:30 Flint says:
I must be the only person in the world who doesn’t see the big fascination of this game. It looks nifty and all but so far there’s been nothing of any substance to actually draw my interest to it.
15/10/2008 at 20:34 Maximum Fish says:
I don’t know what i’m looking at, but it looks cool.
15/10/2008 at 20:37 Martin says:
I know what I’m looking at and it’s just plain text, not even blinking or anything. :(
15/10/2008 at 20:39 Quirk says:
I’m not getting the love for the art here. There are some funky smoke effects over crude, blocky landscapes reminiscent of some of the early PS2 games before coders learned how to use the hardware. Texturing feels, well, mostly missing. Maybe this is early stuff as yet, but I’m not sure why he’s releasing video of it if so.
And that linked last conversation with him just has such an overwhelming Peter Molyneux vibe… I can’t help but feel that hyping this is only going to bring inevitable disappointment.
15/10/2008 at 20:40 Horatius says:
I get the same sense of adventure and wonder from this as I got when I first saw Magic Carpet.
Thumbs up, indie FTW!
15/10/2008 at 20:40 Martin says:
Aha! Bad adblocker! Leave RPS alone.
15/10/2008 at 20:42 Simon Jones says:
It does have occasional moments when it feels like a “my first colour grading session”, but otherwise this looks quite intriguing. Though I was a bit disappointed to see laser-explodey-gibby combat – given the game’s innovation I was hoping for something slightly more unusual, or even a move away from combat altogether.
15/10/2008 at 20:47 Aubrey says:
This… this is almost too hard to believe. I feel I need to pinch myself.
Huge well done. That is so strikingly different… it makes me want to give up!
15/10/2008 at 20:47 Kadayi says:
Visually looks like something Turner would of dreamt up, how the game is whose to say. I’d of thought with all the positive coverage in the press the guy has received he’d have garnered a few more people to help him out by now tbh.
15/10/2008 at 20:53 Willem says:
You can shape the land? How long before the entire game’s surface is covered with giant cocks and naughty words?
15/10/2008 at 20:54 Therlun says:
Looks great.
Now if he drops the combat and focuses on the cooperation part… first successful second generation MMO!
15/10/2008 at 20:56 Butler` says:
Definitely interested.
15/10/2008 at 21:00 Sam says:
@Sandoval:
I agree; the style of the old screenshots was nicer. Maybe you’ll be able to choose between different filters/effects in-game, though?
Anyway, this looks very nice. It reminds me of Darwinia mixed with Noctis.
15/10/2008 at 21:08 Stick says:
It is bloody beautiful… but then I imagine setting Internet Humans loose on it. And I am afraid.
15/10/2008 at 21:16 Pishtaco says:
That is gorgeous. Thank you, Mr Steenberg.
15/10/2008 at 21:25 Gorgeras says:
It could potentially shut up the ‘games are not art’ crowd for good. Games have always been art and we’re about to finally reach Impressionism. The game isn’t content with trying to accurately represent the aesthetics of landscapes, objects and living beings and instead is aiming to represent the idea of them.
Some might say that this has already been done, due to technical limitations in early games; bats and a ball had to be represented by a square and two rectangles in Pong. But the maker of Pong wouldn’t have done it if they knew how to make them look more like bats and balls. I’m optomistic about Love, a sort of surreal Gary’s Mod where imagination is a horrible weapon.
15/10/2008 at 21:27 Serjn says:
How I wish Eskil would be more open to the community, at least concerning the game. I guess there is a large risk of disappointment, but isn’t adequate information a counter to that? I mean, his “news” blog is, more accurately, a personal blog, with 4 out of 5 posts dealing with his views of the world, with rare tidbits of info on LOVE here and there. The insight is valuable, but still..
15/10/2008 at 21:28 Gylfi says:
wonderful…. “this text will be replaced”… what an ingenious work of art, so thick of indipendent-kind of artsy-fartsy nihilism expressionism nonsense.
15/10/2008 at 21:28 The Poisoned Sponge says:
Enthralled.
15/10/2008 at 21:35 Paul says:
I don’t want to play it with anyone else! I want my own beautiful world, not one filled with Spore cocks.
15/10/2008 at 21:38 StalinsGhost says:
Simply amazing. Definitely be getting this one.
15/10/2008 at 21:45 Ian Dorsch says:
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in an mp3 of the soundtrack music, you may grab it here: link to willowtreeaudio.com.
15/10/2008 at 21:49 brog says:
Peaceful music, dreamy landscapes..
It felt so wrong when violence entered the world. Begone with your filthy laser explosions! Away from my Love!
15/10/2008 at 21:57 eyemessiah says:
Looks interesting to me I, for one, like the current art style and I also agree with the magic carpet comment above.
Looking forward too it, fingers crossed it plays nicely.
15/10/2008 at 21:59 Scribe.of.Terra. says:
A working link would be much more welcome.
15/10/2008 at 22:02 Cowbane says:
yay! I was just wondering where this game went. I am so excited for it.
15/10/2008 at 22:03 Tom says:
god this one sounds awesome. time sponge.
15/10/2008 at 22:23 andy says:
hmmm, are we sure its not derek smart?
15/10/2008 at 22:26 Hoernchen says:
“This text will be replaced” ?!?!
15/10/2008 at 22:29 gasp says:
i think i’m in love.
15/10/2008 at 22:45 Rob says:
Amusing to see an enormous number of people around who are just canny enough to install Adblock but far from canny enough to read the comments section before posting complaints to it.