A Yearly Peek At A New Zero
Every year around this time Google calendar reminds me that A New Zero, Cryptic Sea's abstract, multiplayer military vehicle sim, exists. It's so lo-fi that I keep forgetting it's still in development, and expanding at a very slow but steady rate: I tend to forget games that are under a Peggle in size, even if they're capable of procedurally generating massive landscapes and battles. My yearly check-in has dug up a few new videos, showing off the work-in-progress infantry additions that will end up powering Hidden & Dangerous style missions co-op missions. Cor.
One of my favourite games is Black Shades, so I'm perfectly content with abstract people firing guns (although these guys are placeholder). As long as it feels nice, which A New Zero seems to have captured. It's because he's physically modeled the player's entire body. I especially like how it works with the analogue cover system.
See some badly animated ballmen make the ultimate sacrifice for you viewing pleasure.
Picking through blog posts, there are things like cities, mountains and rivers being attempted, with developer Alex Austin adding "For the rivers I'm trying to figure out how players will build bridges across them, obviously doing it brick by brick would take way too long".
Some of that is demonstrated in this difficult to listen to walkthrough: the sound mix is way off, especially with the use of the electronically generated voice. But look: Water, mountains!
The playable version has none of this, and there's no information as to when it'll be updated. Just think of this post as a big tease.