Recently I have been playing a little gem known as
Slime Rancher (pictured above), which is currently available free to
X-Box Live subscribers as part of the services free games promotion it holds every month. An indie game developed and published by
Monomi Park. This survival simulation is, while far from perfect, one of the better examples of a genre that is currently flooding the video games market across most systems. Ever since
Marcus 'Notch' Persson revealed
Minecraft back in 2009 everyone from the indie developer up to the AAA game developer has contributed to the evolution of this growing genre. Even the modding community has added their contributions, with many of Minecraft's mod packs taking the concept to new heights, such as
To The Core,
Project Ozone and
Captive Minecraft, all of which have been played recently by the British gaming group
The Yogscast.
One of the more notorious of these titles was the recently released
No Man's Sky (pictured above), developed
Hello Games which promised oh so much, yet in reality delivered very little. With the 'early access' title
Astroneer (pictured below) hoping to fill the void No Mans Sky left behind, developers should take note of games like Slime Rancher, and the launch version of Minecraft. What both of these games had was a simple to understand foundation which was added to incrementally, of which Minecraft highlights the best. When initially released Minecraft was far from the game it has since become. Notch's original version of the game had only four distinct biomes, but since he left
Mojang and the developer team took over control of his vision the game has since evolved into a multilayered and multifaceted open world survival simulation.
But even Mojang's hardest resolve to push Minecraft fails in comparison to that of Modded Minecraft, which has through the use of many modifications taken what Mojang has delivered and pushed it to greater depths, with powered automation, realistic features and a wealth of crafting options, resources, and extensions to the open world. Yet despite all of what Modded Minecraft has to offer and the multitude of survival games available, one can't help but feel that the destination has not yet been reached, that each and every one of these games is but a stepping stone towards something bigger.
What form the ultimate survival simulation game will ultimately take remains to be seen, and likely will go unnoticed upon its initial release; hell it could be one of the games available to 'test' in early access, but as with the phenomenal success of Minecraft (pictured above), when that game rises above the flood expect to lose many hours late in to the night surviving, farming, building and exploring.
Comments
Post a Comment