Allow me to ask you a question: have you thought about what would happen to life after Earth? Assuming the human race survives to see our sun go supernova and consume our quaint little world, humanity will have to build somewhere else. But what happens then? This is the question that Dual Universe developer NovaQuark asks – and gives us the tools to discover the answers for ourselves. The official Dual Universe Wiki provides some answers, but let me tell you a little more about it.
At its core, Dual Universe is a game about forging the future of humanity. Sharing a single, persistent universe with thousands of other players across a potentially endless number of procedurally-generated planets, everybody who plays Dual Universe will work together, one way or another, to shape the universe as we know it.
So, what all will be at your control? For starters, everything in the game can be edited by the player. What this means is that you can build massive planet-sprawling cityscapes, or construct an array of oribtal platforms. You can also go in the other direction, leaving much of your planet in its natural state as you focus on building upwards, rather than outwards. When the time comes to explore a new world, you can build your own starship – with the only limitations being what you can come up with.
It doesn’t end at visual customization, though. Dual Universe gives programmers free reign to create their own commands. Using the Lua scripting language (the same programming language used for most modern MMOs), you’ll be able to program unique behaviors for AI crewmembers, or create custom controls to determine how you handle your ship’s subsystems.
This wouldn’t be much of an MMO if you didn’t have player-to-player interaction, though, and Dual Universe goes above and beyond with how players can experience this game together. The ships you construct? They’re completely habitable, meaning that hundreds of other players can all live aboard one of these ships. Additionally, they can man stations on the ship to keep it running at peak efficiency, which is more or less the closest any of us will ever come to serving on the USS Enterprise. But if space isn’t your thing, that’s fine – you can become a politician, and help develop the political system that other players will abide by. Will you be a benevolent ruler, or a totalitarian dictator?
If it were me, I’d totally be a Pharaoh.
Dual Universe is still in early development, but you can follow its progress by visiting the game’s official website. You can also discover more about the game by visiting the Official Dual Universe Wiki, where you can learn more about the particulars of the game. Finally, swing through the Gamepedia forums to find some pretty lively discussion about the latest indie games.