Project Overworld

Thinking about the future, advanced technologies comes to our mind such as artificial intelligence, space cities and spacecrafts. We cannot predict when or whether it will actually happen but as of the year 2032, nothing as such came out.

However, Virtual Reality has been on the rise for a few years from now and a lot of interesting ideas came up.

One of those was the idea of "Simulated Reality", or S.R., that allows players to control a game only using their mind. Some inventions using this principle were developed and their trademarks were immediately bought by large-scale companies.

Today, October 12, 2032, "Project Overworld" will release its first server to the public. Developed by "Advanced Simulations", this game aims to exploit S.R. devices in order to simulate an entire universe. Players would spawn on the same planet and try to survive with or against other players while building up stock of resources and defenses.

Eventually, they would be able to progress and exploit different resources to create technologies ranging from a simple wooden spear to an actual space rocket.

Regarding the release of its game, the company "Advanced Simulations" contacted many streamers, videographers and other influencers to bring hype to its creation.

Their first server has a total of 20.000 spots and those who did not make it into the public launch would have to wait for a few months for more servers to open.

"Ah... I can't wait anymore!"

Keith was one of the few who were able to register into the first release. Project Overworld's main screen was now floating before him, with the usual background theme.

Every now and then he would try to connect in the hope that the server ran earlier than expected, but everything seemed to go as planned.

Thus he was sitting there, in the shade of a tree, enjoying the gentle wind that rippled in the infinite plain.

In reality, he was just lying under his bed cover to warm up his body while he was playing, but he couldn't sense any of that.

The launch was planned at 2 pm and Keith had another dozen of minutes to wait. He was really excited, as Project Overworld was one of the most ambitious game ever created with seemingly endless possibilities.

However, he tried to lower his expectations because as of the past, many projects never reached what they had promised. He knew that the game could not simply generate a universe without conceding on the game's optimization. They could also have used some cheap tricks to make Project Overworld playable.

But now wasn't the time to reflect on this, because the announcement stating the server was running finally came before his eyes, and Keith quickly pressed the button to connect.

Everything went black, and he couldn't see anything for a few seconds as his device generated the new world. Finally, land appeared under his feet, and parts of the landscape emerged in the surroundings. Thousands of other players materialized as well, and Keith immediately started moving. He chose a direction, and ran in a straight line only dodging a few tree on his way.

In the spawn area, people started punching each other to death, and some even picked up wooden sticks to beat other players. It was a bloodbath, but Keith was already far away. He expected this kind of behavior, as Advanced Simulations never communicated on the release's Player versus Player system.

Thus, he ran for a miles in order to get to safety and pick up resources without any disturbance.

'I don't understand these guys...' Keith said to himself.

'There's no point in killing players who have nothing on them. I guess no matter what game they are playing in, some people just have fun beating others.'

In Project Overworld, whenever a player is killed, he respawns after a few seconds at his personal spawnpoint that can be set using a bed. However, if the player did not set his spawnpoint, he respawns at the world spawnpoint, that was an area which size was several square miles.

This means that the spawn area could remain the same bloodbath for an hour or so before people eventually get bored killing each other.

Several minutes later, Keith stopped at the edge of a forest while contemplating the landscape before his eyes.

'I actually got into this game.' He thought.

Letting out a slight sigh, he started looking for essential resources such as food and wooden sticks. Each player has access to a personal inventory where he could stock a total of a ton of materials. He then proceeded to craft some basic tools made out of pebbles and wooden sticks that allows him to gather other resources like stone from rocks and wood from trees.

After collecting all this, he started looking for a better place to establish onto. Eventually, he found the perfect place to make his base.