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Meet the Future of God Games

Out Of This World creator leaves minimalist platforming and goes for a game about shaping the world itself for your faithful followers.

August 19, 2010
From Dust
From Dust Credit: Ubisoft

It's interesting how Eric Chahi, most famous for titles like Out of this World and Heart of Darkness, has moved out of the platforming genre and into the god game with his new project, From Dust. Heck, if you watch some random From Dust footage, you could easily mistake it for a new installment of Populous or somesuch -- not a game from a fellow who's worked on minimalist platformers.

Chahi describes it simply: "It's a god game where nature is at the center of the game." One aspect he's very proud of is the incredibly crazy world-manipulation simulator. Limited by your power (I'll get to that in a bit), your role as a deity means that you can shift sands, add foliage, create or destroy waterways, and even muck with volcanoes. During a GDC Europe 2010 panel earlier this week, he showed off how the engine dynamically and quickly reacts to adding hills, ripping big chunks of land out, scooping up water, and altering the flow of lava (reproduced below).

You don't directly interact with the villagers. At most, you send out "calls," which inspire them to try to make their way to whatever you're calling them to. These will usually be relics (Chahi explained that these people have forgotten their past, and you call them towards items left by their ancestors) that will grant powers -- both to them and to you. After you "call" someone, you can see a basic path that indicates how they intend to get to their destination; if it's green, it's all good, but if the path turns red, then you need to intervene.

Some basic geographical interventions for this demo included scooping and displacing water to make a river shallow enough to cross. Or instead grabbing land from another area, and using that to make a bridge across that same waterway. For an analogy, you basically cross the Red Sea for your little Moses to make his way around the world. As a silly aside, for the return journey, Brunier decided to move the water around to have the little person get swept up in the current and quickly descend back to the village.

After returning to the village, Brunier and Chahi explained the point of this little quest. At one point, the village shaman predicted that a tsunami would come and wipe them out. So that's what Brunier "called" the follower for -- to obtain a relic that will protect them against the tsunami. Brunier was working against a generous timer, and the relic was activated in time. So when the tsunami struck, in another dramatic display of the technology at work, the village had a force field surrounding it, and the giant tsunami wave simply crashed against said field (and around the town, in a neat visual). Not only is the village saved, but the player also gets a reward: the ability to freeze water. Another example of progression-via-world-shaping includes grabbing bigger hunks of land or water when moving stuff around. Presumably by game's end, you'll be able to reshape the landscape however you feel like it.

Brunier and Chahi conclude the demo by repeating that From Dust is a download-only game ("you won't be able to find it in a box" quips Brunier) set for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam. And despite the crazy detailed nature/world simulation that runs beneath the gameplay, From Dust looks like it maintains the purity and simplicity of Chahi's earlier work. Stuff like foliage propagation, water pathfinding, and lava heat dynamics all support some very simple actions: Help people. Move the earth. Inspire greatness in your flock by doing so.