Rather exciting news appeared while I was sleeping: The Repopulation will come back*! The developers (Above and Beyond Technologies) decided to leave the Hero Engine behind and port the game to the Unreal Engine.
“This is not a decision that we have taken lightly. While many of our assets will convert over easily to Unreal Engine, the game’s code will need to be rewritten from scratch.”
Of course, this means the game will not get released any time soon. On the contrary, development will take quite a bit longer than we had anticipated. But that’s just how it is and I think overall, the decision may be for the better. With the Unreal Engine, they are no longer dependent on the Hero Cloud services. You can read more about their anticipated advantages of porting in the original article. For me, the most interesting bit is the “improved harvesting system”. Although they also said something about “graphical upgrades” and “eye candy”. I already thought the game was very pretty (see screenshot above), so I am very curious to see the what exactly will look better or different, at least.
Back in November when the problems first emerged, they started working on “Fragmented“, an online 1st person/3rd person shooter with RPG elements, as they now announced. I am not a huge fan of the shooter genre. There are two main reasons for this: for my personal taste, some of them focus too much on violence and on showing that violence (I highly praise Team Fortress 2 with its rubber duckies instead of blood, for example) and then there is my really bad motion sickness for anything with 1st person view. So, being able to play with 3rd person view is great news! The camera is still very close to the character, so I probably won’t be able to play it excessively. Not a bad thing either, though. ;) Healthy amounts of gaming time is much better for me anyway. However, this is a side project to help fund The Repopulation, to give us something to play while we wait and both games will share assets. Additionally, those of us who already own The Repopulation will get Fragmented for free!
“Players are expected to create their own goals in game though. This could include raising a stable of pets, building cities, killing, crafting, or competing with other humans for domination of the new planet.”
This is the part that really got me interested! Fragmented will not be about killing and violence and nothing else. Instead, I can also help build a city or focus on crafting and pets. So far, I am not really sure how exactly this will work, but I guess I will see soon enough!
Altogether, I am very positive about what they have announced now and I hope they will succeed. My thumbs are pressed and I hope we will get to see Fragmented very soon (it sounds like parts will be available in February already) and the next alpha version of The Repopulation in a few months (I admit, I have no idea how long development would probably take in this case and how soon is realistic here).
*Follow this link to read what had happened and what had forced the developers to pause the current development. Massively also tried to summarize the situation back at that point.
Nerdy Bookahs 
Those are pretty good news indeed!
It is also pretty nice of them to give Fragmented for free to those who already bought the Repopulation. I am just concerned about it though because it is a survival game and online only game. A mixture that usually isn’t usually my cup of tea. But I might give it a try when it is launched just to see how I feel about the game.
As for FPSes I usually don’t like them because I am terrible at them. I am the kind of player where the opponent could be 30 cm away, not moving and I would still miss! There are a few exceptions though that I still enjoy despite that though. So this might be one of those too. :)
As for myself I will cross my fingers and toes for the Repopulation!
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Oh, I forgot about the “actually being at least decent” part. I usually quit such games before I even get the chance to experience how bad I am. ;)
Since it’s free for me, I am definitely going to try it out, though. If it wasn’t, I’d probably wait and see. We only got the very first few bits of information about the game, after all. But yes, everything I can cross is crossed, because I really do want to see them succeed!
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