A procedural world, small indie dev, and mysterious gameplay loop. Sounds familiar.
Worlds Adrift isn't your typical MMO. London-based studio Bossa—famed for games like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread—is ditching common systems around character growth, exploration, and combat, and replacing them with fresh takes on player progress, interaction, and accomplishment in the online world. Most interesting of all, it hopes to create the MMO holy grail: a truly persistent world where every player on every server can change the world in ways every other player will see, right down to the placement of rocks. For a team with no prior experience in the genre, this is ambitious. After all, there's a reason so many games have stuck to the conventions that have been around since World of Warcraft.

This is what makes MMOs such a conservative genre: because the business model relies on attracting large numbers of players and retaining them over a long period, it's much easier if you can show potential players something recognisable—and because WoW was the first MMO experience for so many gamers, many MMOs have ended up looking very similar. Worlds Adrift does at least share some similarities with Bossa's previous work, though. Players interact with complex systems of physics, just like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. A grappling hook and tether allows players to swing across gaps, abseil cliff faces, and clamber over walls. Performing Spider-Man-like sequences of seamless swings is difficult given that the system is entirely unassisted, but the lack of automation gives you more freedom.

Worlds Adrift takes place on islands floating in the sky, each procedurally generated with their own unique geometry, colours, and evidence of civilisations past in the form of dilapidated structures. There will be some player-designed islands too, courtesy of the free Island Creator tool currently available on Steam, while Bossa has promised to put its favourites into the final game. Players are simply tasked with exploring this fractured environment. Think of it as No Man's Sky, only with exploration on a more local, relatable scale. Travelling between these islands requires building airships, whose motion and strength is determined by your design. Place the engines unevenly, for instance, and power efficiency will suffer. Want to use light armour plating in order to maintain a high speed? Don't expect to last long in battle.

https://youtu.be/mtiHNnIDhio

Ship design is performed in real-time. To attach an engine, for example, you have to physically move next to it, pick it up, and place it where you think is best. There's a DIY nature to construction which, like grappling, is difficult to master at first, but it does offer the maximum amount of freedom (outside of a more abstract system at least), and thus the more compelling final designs. Spending time manually attaching every mast, wing, and cannon gives ships a far more personal touch, and the end result is more "you," even if it's imperfect.

With Worlds Adrift announced so early (December 2014), and with such a focus on the studio's partnership with London startup Improbable—which provides the underlying tech for the game's persistent world—actually outlining what you do in the game outside of grappling and shipbuilding has taken something of a back seat to the technological hype. Which isn't to say that such hype isn't entirely unwarranted. After all, creating a persistent world where debris from an explosion can float through the air to another player hundreds of virtual miles away, or where the body of a fallen foe will rot over time rather than disappear, is quite the feat.

"What we've built is a way of dispensing with the whole client-server architecture, which is traditional to regular games," Improbable CEO Herman Narula told PC Gamer in a recent interview.

Instead of one server with a game loop and geographical control over one area—a server which can't take a lot of load or handle interesting behaviour—we have a swarm of processors that live and die as and when they're needed. These orchestrate together without a game loop, without a central controller, to model and simulate a world, and it just scales, because you have a swarm of these things.
Now, instead of a single game engine you have thousands of these workers that are able to collaborate on the fly, in milliseconds, to congregate within a space in the gameworld, and do work that simulates the world. We're able to siphon off different things, like physics, AI, whatever, to things that are very good at doing that kind of work. Instead of a central authoritative loop, which is how games and simulations are traditionally made, think of it as a big swarm or orchestra of processors.

It's all very similar to another game that promised the world: No Man's Sky. There's the groundbreaking tech, the scale that seems beyond the reach of the small indie team handling development, and the mystery surrounding the core gameplay loop. Well, sort of. Worlds Adrift does have a beta players can register for, and I've at least some idea of what you can do outside of ship construction and grappling. With a ship built you're free to cross the world as you see fit, either solo or as a team. Joining up with players to form a crew gives you the advantage of teamwork when it comes to sailing through the sky, and as a group you can take greater risks.

Other ships might try to attack and plunder the materials you've used to build your ship, but as a crew you can make use of everything the ship has to offer. One person can concentrate on piloting, while another can man the guns, all the while someone else is making repairs and another is acting as lookout. Keeping your ship intact is key to survival. Many islands are blocked by huge storms, and flying into them causes enormous damage to your ship. Within two minutes of entering one during a demo my engines had fallen off and I'd lost rudder control, the vessel spinning violently before eventually dropping out of the sky to its death. I managed to glide out of the storm using a wing suit, but I was essentially marooned on an island until I could build a new ship.

The idea is that you travel between islands in to find new components to buff your ship, and give you the best chance of making it through the storm gate and on to the next set of islands. Having a crew here is important, too, as constant repairs are needed given the volume of lightning strikes you're likely to encounter.

Conversely, you might opt to forego the travelling angle entirely. It's entirely likely that visionary members of the community will find satisfaction in building vessels for others. A player might want to concentrate on exploration and combat, but that means he or she has the time or inclination to build a ship. Those same creative individuals might decide they want to see different places and hop aboard a ship that they originally built, piloted by someone with the kind of skills required to pass through a storm safely—skills the creator hasn't taken the time to learn.

The creator side has been expanded from the original design, to allow you to build a ship from the ground up, giving you full control over the core geometry as opposed to simply providing blocks to connect. Wireframe models can be altered in any way you desire, so that you can design ships that are unique to your needs. Maybe you want a flying fortress that can house huge numbers of players, foregoing island life for a nomadic commune. Alternatively, a small, fast scout ship for one might be more your style. Of course, plenty of people are going to want to recreate their favourite vehicles from Star Wars, Star Trek et al.

One of the most interesting things about allowing players complete freedom to design something is how the community is going to react to the presence of these ships. Once the ship is in the world it's fair game for everyone, meaning it could be stolen by someone enamoured with what you've built. This form of tangible, dare I say "emergent," gameplay is the most exciting thing about Worlds Adrift, persistent online world included. Your personal story isn't built around abstract values assigned to your health, speed, or magic, it's built around what you've seen and done.

The value you have as a player comes down to what you've explored, how good a builder you are, what advice you can give to others, how well you can grapple to reach isolated places, what your skills as a pilot are like, and more. It's likely that you're going to have a natural skill in at least one of these areas and, as such, you're a valued part of the community from day one. This is unlike a traditional MMO, in which you're a n00b until you've spent the hundreds of hours required to level up to the point where you're of value to the dedicated player base.

Any unique take on a successful genre is going to be met with caution from the core players, of course, but it's through rewriting the rulebook that progress is made. No matter what level of success Worlds Adrift goes on to have, I hope that its goals as a game spark brave new ways of thinking about what an MMO can be.

Worlds Adrift will be released for Windows PCs at some nebulous point in the future. There is currently no release date.