Europa Is (Sort Of) Fallout 3 In Space
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.