When Marcus “Notch” Persson cancelled 0x10c, he laid the blame at the feet of a “weird creative block” that hampered his game development. In his blog, however, he has revealed that it was the sheer weight of fan expectation that killed the highly-anticipated space-sim. The Minecraft creator was so concerned about becoming “another under-delivering visionary game designer” that he’d rather ice the project than do a George Lucas. Instead, he’s going to concentrate on producing smaller games away from the public eye, adding that he’s looking forward to playing Project Trillek, 0x10c’s spiritual successor, when it’s done.
After suffering a “creative block” with development of his 0x10c project, Markus “Notch” Persson has definitively killed the idea, saying he has “no future aspirations” for it. The keenly anticipated game involved space travelers who wake up after an eons-long hypersleep and have to deal with enemies and other problems aboard their spaceship. He broke the news to disappointed fans on a livestream, but some have decided to keep the idea alive via community effort called Project Trillek. While they’d drop the whole cryosleep bit, the team would keep the concept of a crew navigating space and managing their craft with a 16-bit CPU, Minecraft-style. We’re glad it’s not dead yet, but whether it can survive the vacuum of a Notch-less space remains to be seen.
Back in 2012, Minecraft’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson announced a new game titled 0x10c. The game was designed as a sci-fi simulator with test footage from the game having been released as well, giving gamers a brief idea of what they might be able to expect. Unfortunately if you were hoping to get your hands on the game in the near future, it looks like that might not be happening as Notch has announced that the game has been put on hold indefinitely. The reasoning behind it is because Notch has run into some creative blocks and cited that the game did not feel fun to play, thus it has been put on hold until he can figure it out.
Now the good news is that the game will not be on ice for too long because it seems that fans of Notch’s work have decided to pick up the project themselves. The project dubbed “Project Trillek” will not be based 100% on 0x10c, but will instead be a game inspired by it. It will not be using the code from 0x10c, its story, or the title itself, so we really have to wonder just how much of 0x10c we will see in it. According to Shane Dalton, the project’s lead and head writer (via US Gamer), “We just sort of looked at the project and were like, ‘Okay. This is a community project now,’”
There are no plans to monetize Project Trillek, except to ask for donations to offset server costs. No word on when Project Trillek will be released either, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled nonetheless.
Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, the brains behind the hugely popular game Minecraft, has moved on from his brick building title, although it does remain to be seen whether he will be a victim of his own success in due time with new games that he releases down the line. Why don’t you be the judge this time around, with the maiden footage of his new game titled ’0x10c’ being released to the masses as shown above?
Granted, the video leans more towards a development test of the game’s art and dynamic lights as Markus shoots lasers down dark hallways, but Markus did mention, “The goal is to have it feel a bit like [US sci-fi show] Firefly.You can try to land on a planet but you mess up and, instead of having the ship just explode like it would in real life, the landing gear gets broken. Then you have to try to fix that by finding resources. Instead of the adventure being flying from here to here, it’s: ‘I set the destination, oh god I hit a small asteroid and the cloaking device broke’. I think they really nailed that kind of emergent aspect in [spaceship simulation game] FTL.”
The game is definitely in its early phase of development, but it has been confirmed that as a player, you will be in possession of a ship that has an on-board computer for you to program, all 16-bits of it. The whole idea of the game will not require you to know programming, although you can share the code that you have come up with, so I believe that programmers worth their salt might find this to be something out of the ordinary.
Gamers have been waiting on tenterhooks for Markus “Notch” Persson’s next offering, titled 0x10c, and while the Minecraft creator has detailed some aspects of the upcoming game, even he’s not sure exactly how it’ll end up. Newly released video footage (after the break) shows a first-person shooter aboard a spaceship, and the creators told PC Gamer that they’d “really like for stuff to go wrong,” so that players can use creativity and resource-gathering, Minecraft-style, to fix it. Persson also said that the ship would contain a fully-programmable 16-bit computer (which sounds a bit like a recent Minecraft mod), and that multiplayer would be added early in the development. Apart from that, though, the team admitted “we don’t know where 0x10c is really headed,” and that they shouldn’t “raise too many people’s expectations.” Based on the rampant speculation so far, it seems like that ship may have already sailed.
Earlier this year we revealed that Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Persson was working on a new game, the rather hard to pronounce 0x10C. This is a follow up to Minecraft and will be a space-based adventure game. Now there’s still no word on when the game will be released, but for fans of Minecraft and who are looking forward to seeing what Notch can cook up next, you’re in luck as Notch has released some footage of the game. It should be noted that this footage isn’t so much a game trailer as it is him testing the game itself where features such as physics, bobbing and guns are being demoed. Given its early stages, we can’t really judge the game yet but if you’re curious as to Notch’s progress, check out the demo in the video above. Alternatively you can head on over to the 0x10C’s website to follow its progress.
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