You and your ragtag band wander from island to island on your cobbled-together airship, scouring for lost technology and scavenging for resources. You are constantly trying to improve your ship, keep it fueled, and keep it repaired. Sky predators, storms, and other travelling bands—all of which could be a threat to your ship—will dominate your thoughts. But in the back of your mind, you still ask yourself questions: How did your world become this way? What calamity, a thousand years ago, could have shattered the world into a thousand pieces? Deep down you know that the world was not always this way, and your questions are what drive you onward and upward, towards the endless skyline.

First, Worlds Adrift is set in a persistent, shared multiplayer environment. That means anyone who plays the game will be in the same enormous world. (Due to the increased importance of low latency in a game with physics, however, the current plan is to have separate servers for different geographic regions—we can’t overcome the speed of light, I’m afraid).

Bossa Studios is accepting applications for the next playtest of Worlds Adrift. Successful applicants will be able to experience a myriad of brand-new features, including the Shipyard where players can create unique ship designs of any shape or size updated UI and controls, improved framerate, new creatures, and plenty more.

Bossa is also showcasing progression mechanics for the first time, allowing players to explore the Knowledge tree to learn how to build proficiency in certain skills, discover ancient databanks filled with rewards, and unlock pieces of lore that will give players insight into the history of the shattered world.

Sign-ups start today at the game’s official site,and run until November 18, with the playtest launching later this month.

Island Creator Update Launches

Bossa also announced  their newly revised and expanded Island Creator, available now for free on Steam. Using the Island Creator, players can create and upload unique islands, that may feature in the game itself. The simple but powerful toolset is being expanded with a host of new features for aspiring game designers to experiment with, including the ability to create complex ruins containing valuable loot, hide containers and chests that will spawn in the live game, encode murals and ancient databanks that need to be deciphered by other players to gain powerful knowledge, and much more.

Secondly, the world will live and breathe. Worlds Adrift will not be an MMORPG as we know them. There are no quest hubs and no NPCs standing around forever, waiting to give you tasks. There are no low-level zones and high-level zones, because there will be no levels. There are no static, choreographed environments and events that replay for every new player.

Instead, there will be creatures that eat and live and die, and trees that grow, and ruins that hold secrets, and wreckage that rusts and rots, all inside a world that doesn’t revolve around you, but that can be permanently affected by your actions. You are a part of the world, and it’s up to you to decide which part that is, and how it relates to all the other parts.

Lastly, the world will behave according to believable physics. Ships are constructed of pieces — each of which can be snapped off if there’s a strong enough impact. Much of the world will also behave like this: creatures, wreckage, loose objects on the ground. And of course there will be plenty of rope physics involved in player movement.