[E3 2013] Project Spark - "Let It Spark Your Imagination!"

Do you have an idea to create a game but don't know how to make it?
Do you want to play a game that you made yourself with your friend?

Remember how PS have RPG maker series that focused on creating RPG?
Or maybe LittleBigPlanet series that also on PS3?

Now, we have something bigger than those. Introducing a game where player "create" their own game at let other people play it, "Project Spark"! And by far, this is my favorite demo from day 1.

Make your own world!

Project Spark setting will be on fantasy world. Story? There's no such thing as story yet. Why? Because it's 'you', the player, that will be make the game! Said as Microsoft's answer to Sony's LittleBigPlanet, this Xbox One exclusive game give the freedom to player to create anything! Using Xbox One control mechanism such as Kinect and Smart Glass, player will be able to interact and change the world as they like.


First the player need to make the world. Decide the environment first. You want it on the forest? Or maybe dryness of a desert? Or the coldness of Artic? Then you decide the nuance with time setting. Morning? Afternoon? Dawn? Night? Cool! The best thing? You can do all this with voice recognition from Kinect! Though the setting only show Day-Evening-Night, you can 'say' the time you want to make it so. Technology these day sure is amazing!

After you finish set up the basic setting of the world, it's time to paint the surface!

With a swoosh, come a mountain...

...And with a sweep, come a bridge!

You can see from the screenshot that creating a world for a game, probably, never been so easy! As a game developer myself, I'm drooling to get that kind of world building engine. I mean, you draw a line to make a road and automatically add bridge when there's a ravine? How fun is that? Especially if you can use Smartglass application to assist you. You do that not with controller, not with analog stick, but with your own finger!

After you are happy with the world's landscape, let's add other thing to the world so it's not empty and lifeless. Do we add it like in simulation game such as SimCity with grid and all from top view? Nope. You press one button and your player, named Cloud if I hear correctly, dropped into the world. Wait, what? We haven't add anything yet but we already put our hero inside! Ssshhh.... Don't be too hasty buddy. We use that hero to put things into the world! To place a village, you will be given a statue. This statue will be the town square. You walk to the place you want and place the statue there and voila! Houses and building will automatically added surrounding the statue which now become a real town square. You village will have a village gate included too!

Mom! I plant a statue and a village grow from it!

Amazing isn't it? You don't need to waste your time placing individual building here and there. I suppose player will have the choice to add or modified individual building so some advanced players can layout their village as they like. Though the demo doesn't show that so I can't say anything about that.

What do we need next? An AI! Isn't AI hard to code? I don't know anything about code or AI! Relax buddy. Here, everything has a brain. I don't know how extensive this everything be but looking at the demo, it looks like everything here literally means "everything". This brain start as empty. Brain has two part to configure. "When" part and "Do" part. Each when is paired with do. I don't how extensive this pairing can go. From my view as a guy knowledgeable in IT, this When-Do is a different facade of If-Then. This game teach people how to code! The game looks like has preset behaviors such as pet, bird, turret, fighter, villager, explosive, and others.

Believe stone, and you can fly....

When player choose a preset, the When-Do will automatically be filled. In the demo, the player give 'Pet' behavior to a stone. Yup, a stone! Remind me of Patrick Star and his pet stone. When the pet behavior is chosen, the stone get new When-Do list. When the pet detect player, it will get near him and jump. Later he also change the behavior into a fighter, turning the stone into a human like stone-golem that can attack enemy. Since this is a "Create-Play-Share" type of game, I'm expecting that players can write their line of code and share it to other players. Amazing!

Then player can add enemies outside the gate. The list ranging from squirrel to goblins. This also, I expect, can be created by player and shared with others. When placing goblins, a goblin camp shows up and from inside goblins swarming out and attacking the village! What should we do?? Remember our pet stone? Change it behavior to fighter, and it will take care the rest.

The Opening Cutscene from Owner's game. The Village gate is no more!

Now the demo show a game that already build by other staff for 3 days. The first player join that game (from here on we call 'guest') while the one who make the game (let's call him 'owner') still able to stay inside the game and changing things inside even when the guest is playing the game!

The guest is playing the game, but the army of goblins are too much for him. Pffffft, newb! Oh, well the Owner seems need to give a hand to defeat the goblins. As I said, the Owner still able to change everything on the game. Let's just he is the god of this game. While the guest walks to get around, walking is for commoner, not for god, right? No! Instead, let's command the below him to move around and bring the Owner with it. Feels like Earth Bending, really. Feels awesome! Maybe I will play this game just to be... Awesome.

Move aside commoner, god coming through.

The Owner, with some earth bending, now in the middle of battle field. Looking ahead, the guest is asking for help and the goblins are nearing fast. Then the owner use his god-like power to do some fire bending and create a fire ball and throw it to the swarm of goblin. KaBoom! And it makes a nice pool of lava too. Quite a neat skill this fire bending is. This pool of lava seem manage to hold those goblins back. Good job, god, er, I mean, Good job, Owner!

HADOUKEN! is a fire bending technique.

Never, ever make god angry... You goblins learn that the hard ways.

Lava pool is a great fire bending technique. It's cool, it's fire, and it's awesome! But that silly guest seems can't do anything on his own. Yet again he ask help from the all powerful owner. The pool is not enough to this ungrateful commoner. But Owner is all-benevolent and exhale his breath for a while. He then turn towards the stone-man, the pet stone which was promoted to fighter before. With some behavior change, the stone-man surrounded in blue light float and POOF! It's no longer a stone-man! It turn into a gigantic and towering Stone mech! But it still not moving, since it's a piloted mecha like Gundam. Owner move near it with his earth bending power and get inside the Stone mech to pilot it. The goblins will feel the wrath of god! With a mecha!

And the people rejoices. No really, the audience cheering when this thing shows up.

I was stunning with the demo! The interactivity is amazing, the simplicity to make a game is amazing, and the feeling that you feel as the one who make the game is... Awesome! Probably this is the game you need to get if you want to be awesome. Because being awesome is awesome!

This game will be an Xbox One exclusive game and support both Kinect (with its voice recognition) and smartglass to help you playing and making the world. The game will feature sharing system where players can make their own content and store it on database. This user created content then can be downloaded and used by other players.

"Project Spark" is a game that will make gamers as both Player and Creator, making ordinary gamer getting closer to become a game maker.

If I ever buy Xbox One, this is the only reason...

Watch the astounding demo below!


Don't forget to check out my other post on E3 games that can be found here!

This is Benz reporting, see you on the next post!!
AAAAAANNNNNNNNNDDDDDD CUT!!!!!!