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Hey there, I’m Rho Watson, the lead developer behind Farworld Pioneers. This 2D adventure galaxy sandbox is a hybrid of many genres. More than that, though, it’s the game I’ve always wanted to make. Let me tell you why!
As a teenager, I played Infiniminer and was one of the first people to try the online version of Minecraft. The online sandbox genre captured my imagination, but it never really achieved what I hoped it would. Once I finished building my grand projects, there was no real reason for them to exist. My gigantic bases sat there, dormant and unused, because there was no one besides me to use them. My friends would come, check it out momentarily, and inevitably go off to do their own thing.
After many years of playing these games and being part of developing some, I decided to bite the bullet and try to do what no one else had done: make an online sandbox game with the excitement of building and creating, but with AI residents to actually give a reason for those things to exist. I wanted to give players a reason to build besides simple curiosity and showing off to often-reluctant friends!
Farworld Pioneers represents two major parts of my life as a gamer: playing old MS-DOS (For those who don’t know, it’s how you played games before Windows!) classics as a kid and then the rise of the online sandbox genre as an adult. That’s how Farworld Pioneers was born! Like many games, this game is a cross-section of the journey my career in video games took and a tribute to the games that are responsible for it.
But Farworld Pioneers isn’t just an online sandbox game. It’s a 2D adventure sandbox with managerial elements. Imagine an RTS where you were one of the guys running around and could help out at any time. Your residents need to be kept happy, fed, and safe, which means it matters how your base is designed. Poor design will lead to your residents becoming unhappy and leaving the base, which further compromises its functioning. Accumulating wealth will make your base a target for raiders and pirates, making defenses and tactics a must when designing a colony. Confusing supply lines will disorient your residents and disrupt supply; power sources need fuel to run; residents need food, the list goes on.
The beauty of AI-controlled residents is that they provide a way to delegate tasks you don’t want to do. Instead of painstakingly building a giant house yourself, you can place the plans down and have your team of guys do it while you go adventuring. Tired of mining? You can drag out an area, and your guys will do it for you. What’s more, they’ll then haul off the materials to be processed so they’re ready for use. And at any time, you can join in and help them, and it won’t disrupt the process; the option’s there if you feel like it. Once you’ve achieved all the things you’d like to do on one planet, you can build a ship with your colonists and launch into space to explore and find new resources, biomes, and technology. There are bosses, secrets, a full tech tree to unlock, and many more features, including a huge multiplayer mode with up to 32 others that I don’t have time to explain here! I’m super excited for everyone to be able to play when it launches on Xbox and with Xbox Game Pass on May 30th!