No Man’s Sky: Indie Sci- Fi Game of Galactic Proportions

The upcoming space simulation video game, “No Man’s Sky,” by Hello games, recently shown on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has been turning heads in the industry since its reveal in 2013 for its grand scale and unusually small indie development team.

Hello Games are close to finishing their latest title “No Man’s Sky.” Following several presentations of the impressive space exploration gameplay. but many remain skeptical about how the game will fare when it is released.

This past Friday, Sean Murray of Hello Games appeared on The Late Show to give a presentation of their game. The game takes place  in a universe with over “18 quintillion planets,” as Murray said in his interview on The Late Show, each with their own procedurally generated geography and wildlife. The small development team that began as only four people, and has since grown to ten, is able to create this enormous world through procedural generation, algorithms that set parameters for possible computer generated creations, but can also allow for enough diversity that would often surprise even the creators. “As a developer it’s cool to feel that I don’t know everything there is to see,” said Murray to CNN after a showcase at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last June.

The game was announced back in 2013 and rapidly earned fame for its promise of a vast, full scale universe to explore, while also earning the suspicion of many who doubted the capabilities of such a small studio. Sony Entertainment accepted the offer to publish the game some time after its original debut at VGX in 2013, giving the small indie developers a chance to showcase their game the following year at E3 2014, and develop for Sony’s PlayStation 4 console.

Questions still circle as to whether or not the ambitious science fiction title will live up to the excitement surrounding it. After its latest exhibition at E3 2015, where Murray unveiled to an audience live unscripted gameplay, resulting in what he described to “Rock, Paper, Shotgun” as a less “bombastic” presentation than other game trailers. Only after the game’s release, which has yet to be announced, will we be able to tell if it will be a commercial success compared to other AAA titles.