Antares is a complex and highly ambitious sandbox MMORPG currently in development, created using SpatialOS technology.
What is Antares Open World? The game is described as “the concept & modeling of a morphogenetic procedural multi-domain field environment
based on connectionist approaches of sub-symbolic type
on an AOW-based IDE for world simulations.”
Not understood? No worries. Antares Open World (AOW) simply aims to be a groundbreaking, complex strategy-sandbox MMORPG set in a vast, simulated world that players can alter.
You find yourselves in the world of Antares, where nothing is as it seems. Reality and perception are far apart. Therefore, it is necessary to always be on guard. You cannot trust anyone and must uncover the secrets of the world, which may even lead to rewriting the history.
A Highly Ambitious MMORPG
What makes the MMORPG special? AOW is extremely ambitious and offers interesting features. These include:
- You can manipulate and alter the world and the objects within it
- Animals and plants create an ecosystem that promises a lifelike world
- Your decisions affect you and the world. You have to live with the consequences
- The soul plays an important role, as through it you can “outsource” character values to trick death
- When you are offline, you can assign tasks to your character so it continues to develop in your absence
Additionally, the game breaks with several elements that are usually common in the genre. These include:
- no grinding mechanisms
- no random events
- no global auction houses
- no health bars
- no levels
- no classes
- no names above characters (tags)
- no name changes
- no classic chats or interfaces
- no quest markers
- no interaction markers
- no teleportation (waypoints)
Developer Jan Ohlmann explains that the title is not for casual gamers; he plans to make Antares Open World one of the most complex MMORPGs ever.
How will the game be realized? The SpatialOS technology from Improbable will be used, enabling the creation of and management of huge online worlds.
What is the status of the MMORPG? AOW is in a very early stage of development. The team is currently looking for staff to help realize the extremely ambitious vision for the game. It will take quite some time before AOW is in a truly playable state.
Furthermore, the developers are planning a Kickstarter campaign to finance the game. There is currently no date for the crowdfunding.
Is the game overly ambitious?
What are the dangers? AOW sounds extremely ambitious. However, the team behind it is still quite small, and a planned Kickstarter campaign implies that funding options are being sought.
Already other SpatialOS games, which were similarly ambitious, have been shut down. It often feels that small teams take on too much with these projects. While SpatialOS promises that indie developers can create vast worlds for their games, this is not enough when it comes to an MMORPG.
Therefore, it remains to be seen how Antares Online World will develop further.
