Overview
Extroforge takes players to a strange and mysterious alien world, where they must work with their team mates to make a new home for themselves. The alien world is both beautiful and ruthless. There are sweltering jungles to the south, and a frozen ice land in the north.
Using only minimal technology, players must begin securing resources, and then using those resources to establish a home base. Utilizing a block building mechanic, players use various building materials to construct whatever they can imagine. Towers, walls, buildings, bridges, etc.
The core of this game is a first person shooter that innovates in a number of different ways:
· Open World - Players have absolute freedom to go anywhere in the world. Each game is on a completely and totally randomly generated 16 square km island in the middle of a vast ocean. Every game will be unique and memorable. It's one big battleground.
· Visuals - Utilizing the Unity 3D game engine, the world looks and feels absolutely breathtaking. When you're lost in the depths of the misty jungle you'll feel the claustrophobia pressing in. When you're scaling the snowy peaks in the north, you will feel a shiver as the wind chills you.
· Multiplayer Resource Management - The team must work together to build an infrastructure to maximize their resources. From discovering the mineable items deep in the wilderness, to extracting energy and building materials, to chopping down trees, to building power lines over mountains and valleys to bring those resources back to the base, players will have to work together for the success of the team.
· Powerful Construction Tools - Using intuitive controls, players will quickly be able to set about the construction of epic bases, towns, cities, towers - whatever can be imagined. Build a towering platform that overlooks half the map. Construct a bridge between two mountain tops. Create a walled fortress that protects your resources and infrastructure. Build automated defenses around your mines. If your enemy destroys your resource extractors, your supply is cut off.
· Vehicle Creation - Using the same blocks that are used to build bases, vehicles of any shape, design and style can be created. Build a small scout hoverboard for one. Or build a massive destroyer designed to reign hell from above, and fly your entire team to the enemy's backyard. Add engines, thrusters, fuel tanks, guns and bombs. Want to focus on speed? Use light materials and more thrust. Want to focus on firepower? Use strong heavy materials, and load up the weaponry. Leave a hole in the middle of the floor and you have a drop ship to bring players to battle, or drop powerful bombs from. Depending on choices of engine, weight and thrust, a vehicle could be a hovercraft, tank, boat and even a submarine.
· Advanced Weaponry - Using various raw materials and choices of technology, different types of weapons can be designed and built. Attach a homing ability to an explosive rocket and you have a missile. Increase muzzle velocity and rate of fire, and you have a powerful anti-aircraft gun. Attach a powerful explosive to the end of a high caliber projectile with massive range, and you have something like a Howitzer.
· Story - The story behind Extroforge is rich, deep and full of mystery. What is this planet? Why is it uninhabited? Who used to live here? Throughout the exploration of regular gameplay, hints and relics will be discovered. At key points throughout the game, phantoms of an ancient race will make themselves known. Players will learn there's much more than meets the eye on this planet, and will be presented with quest-like choices that will determine whether the planet works with them, or against them. Are they really gone? Or have they just evolved? Reminiscent of the kind of mystique surrounding movies like "The Matrix", and "Inception", and TV shows like "Lost". With tons of "Aha moments", players will spend as much time talking about the game as they will playing it.
The plan is that ExtroForge will:
· Successfully bring together the best aspects of games like MineCraft, PlanetSide 2, Command & Conquer and Call of Duty, while bringing in the rich kind of lore that is typical of most MMORPGs. Players who love being creative and building things will enjoy creating (and then defending) massive structures, fortresses, headquarters and more. Players who love exploration will head into the wilderness to find the resources and world secrets.
· Give players experiences that they will talk about for years to come. Reminiscing about great battles, the rise and fall of epic cities, and stories like that "vehicle we built that one time that had 200 guns, 20 thrusters, and carried the entire team toward glorious victory before a guy named Leeroy drove it into a mountain side with everyone on board".
· Begin a franchise with potential for spin-off games, further exploration, books, movies and TV.
· Spawn a community of fans who will want to cover all facets of the game in Wikis, and celebrate Extroforge in events like Comic-Con.
The Random World
The entire map is 100% randomly generated at runtime. Using a single random number seed, all connected players will experience the exact same world. Every hill, valley, mountain, river and lake are procedurally generated using a complex, and lightning-fast terrain generation algorithm. Textures are applied to the world based on real-world rules, and every blade of grass, plant, bush, stone and tree are intelligently placed to create a stunning and unique environment.
Every game played is a completely unique game.
Hit the Ground running
The first phase of the game can be looked at as the preparation for war. It is the building and resource mining that takes place before any battles take place.
Players will literally begin with nothing but a Fabrication Gun loaded with 100 units of energy. From that they will begin to forge their roles in this game. Each game will take anywhere from minutes to hours to play, with a complete game being determined by the destruction or the surrender of the opposing team.
Right away, the scattered team will need to find each other and establish a place to build their command center. The options are limitless. The base could be on a mountain top, hidden in a forest, in a valley, and even underwater. If players need to climb the side of a large cliff, they use their Fabrication Gun to begin building steps into the side of the cliff so that other team mates can get to the top as well.
Once the command center is established, the team will have to divide up tasks. Some players will head off to locate resources and begin building a network of power relays to get the resources back to the base. Others will begin laying the groundwork for the base itself, while others still will begin scouting for the opposing team and getting an idea of what the enemy's strategy is.
As a player progresses and gains experience, they will increase stats like health, armor, and level, and gain access to greater technology that can benefit themselves and the team.
Once the resources are flowing in, construction of the base proper can begin, as well as the secondary buildings like alloy forges and vehicle shops. Using alloys and developed energy technologies, players can begin constructing vehicles of war, researching weapons and preparing to move into the battle phase of the game.
The Battle Phase
The battle phase is the logical next step after a base has been constructed and fortified, and weapons and vehicles have been created. Much of the success of the game for each team relies on reaching a battle-ready state first.
It is likely that there will have been small skirmishes as players from opposing teams encountered each other during the build-up phase, it's the battle phase that will necessitate the all-hands-on-deck team-based combat. Players will need to man the guns on their base walls. Players will need to pilot the vehicles that they've built. And it will be quite personal, when the enemy is coming en-masse to destroy the buildings and architecture that you and your team have literally created by hand. You aren't just defending your life, you are defending your creations.
The battles can be full-on epic firefights, or they can be filled with strategy and guerilla warfare. The enemy could choose to go after your power lines, or your resource extractors, so you'll have to use strategy to decide where to focus your efforts.
Whether you're defending, or attacking, the excitement at this phase will be unparalleled.
