

Simulation games that involve building a civilization from the ground up often stop, more or less, when they catch up to modern technology. With The Universim, Crytivo Games is trying to build an ambitious god game which will allow you to see a civilization through to expansion across a galaxy populated with dynamically generated planets.



The Universim will give the player limited ability to affect the growth of the civilization. Things like choosing research subjects will be in the player’s domain, but while the player can choose where to put things like the epicenter of a city, it will be up to the people of the civilization to expand the city outward. That doesn’t mean the game will lack depth, though. It looks like it will be up to the player to decide things like how eco-friendly to be, whether to drain the planet dry or trade speed off for sustainability, and resource management is intended to be a key part of gameplay.

Once the player’s civilization researches advanced enough technology, they’ll be able to spread out to other worlds. Different planets will have different characteristics, including available resources, different types of weather and temperature conditions, seasons of different lengths, and the like. The player will need to investigate planets ahead of time to prepare for colonization. The planets will be dynamically generated by Crytivo’s in-house simulation engine, which will maintain all the environmental variables that can make or break a civilization or colony.

There’s a lot more that could be said about The Universim’s prospects. It has great potential. The video above is about 9 minutes long, but packed with good information after the initial story trailer, and their Kickstarter page has a lot of detail about the direction they plan to take the game and the depth of simulation Crytivo is going for.

The Universim is being built in Unity3D and should be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux if successfully funded. You can get a copy of the game for as little as $15, and Crytivo Games is also taking pledges via PayPal.

[The Universim]