Space, Squared: Notch's 0x10c First Screens

Information about Notch's recently announced space exploration game 0x10c has been slowly emerging from stasis. The fine fellow tweeted a screenshot of the forthcoming game, showcasing "Flashlights, for spelunking and fixing broken ships!" featuring two spacemen (who resemble the Soldier from that low-res TF2 model pack quite a bit, come to think of it. Notch stealing content! Proof that Notch is more evil than EA!) standing in a creepy dark room with what looks to be the much talked about 16bit Basic computer in the background. But there's more! That screen from the tweet was linked on the official site as 006.jpg, and if you cunningly replace the numbers with 001 through to 007, more screens are revealed. Im' a propa investelagativ jurnlist. Naturally it's likely that more screens will be added as work progresses, but for the time being I've put the seven already up at the time of writing after the jump for your convenience.

It's worth bearing in mind that these screens represent a build so alpha it probably mostly exists as the dreams Notch's computer has while in sleep mode. But there's still fascinating details to be glimpsed here. Excitingly, the 16bit Basic computer seems to already be functional in 001, the blue screen displaying a happy little message about the keyboard working while being observed by shadowy floating balls. My favourite is 007, a tantalisingly atmospheric glimpse of a lone cosmonaut standing at a window, looking out into the inky blackness of space.

001

002

003

004

005

006

007

Already my imagination is running amok with all the possibilities that 0x10c might have. Notch's famously see-through development process can be an asset just as much of a curse. It's not hard to see the frothy-mouthed fervour of those extremist Minecraft fans applying themselves with the same aggressive force to this one, imagining a game or elements different to that of the final product, or even Notch's initial vision. Which I've noticed has already changed: on the homepage, the feature list now reads "Hard science fiction. Update: GAH, NO! I'm focusing on fun gameplay instead. I still want to get corrected on glaring scientific errors, though."

In that case Notch, floating shadow balls wouldn't be able to use a keyboard. Get it right, man.