Played in first person view, Dual Universe takes place in a vast realistic universe made of millions of planets, and focuses on emergent collective gameplay based around exploration, mining, crafting, trade, politics and warfare.

The concept of Dual Universe is described by Novaquark as a “Boundless MMO”: based on an innovative server technology called CSSC (Continuous Single-Shard Cluster), the game enables everybody to play in the same world, at the same time, without any slicing of the game universe into instances or zones. In addition, for the first time in a single-shard MMO, the world is entirely modifiable and an unlimited number of players will be free to build together, cooperate or compete. The focus has been made on giving the keys back to the MMORPG fans: using the building blocks provided by the game, the in-game community will make the choices and create the content they will play in.

French developer Novaquark announced that Dual Universe has entered its Alpha Stage.

Novaquark plans to continue expanding its sci-fi universe until it hits Beta in the first half of 2020 and officially launches in the latter half of 2020. This roadmap arrives alongside the announcement that all Kickstarter backers will be granted access to the in-development Alpha by the end of 2018, as originally announced during its crowdfunding campaign.

This significant milestone at Alpha welcomes a plethora of fundamental refinements and opportunities, adding to the game’s already impressive roster of features:

• World Building: terraform the world and build your own secret base, one voxel at a time
• Create and Save designs: build your own bases and vehicles with voxels. Save designs of what you build by making blueprints
• Explore and Harvest: go prospecting to find precious minerals. Sell at the NPC market to buy components for your constructs
• Craft your components: produce the interactive components you need for your bases and ships.

Built upon four key pillars - Explore, Build, Trade, Conquer - Dual Universe’s Alpha 1 brings the first three facets of this massive sci-fi sandbox to life, allowing players to explore and build almost anything they can imagine. From subterranean bases and futuristic cityscapes, to spaceships capable of interstellar travel and planet-bound hovercraft, not even the sky’s the limit. Plus, with the launch of Alpha 1, players have a lot more room to create. Thanks to the dev team’s terraforming efforts, Alioth, the game’s starting planet, has reached an area size close to the one of real life Great Britain, and that’s only the first planet.

Underpinning the game is Dual Universe’s proprietary technology, which allows millions of players to interact across one continuous shard, meaning that players are not separated by servers, instances or loading time.

“With feedback from over 4,000 players, our pre-alpha stage was incredibly successful, and we’re thrilled that we have a core community of players who are as passionate about the game as we are. Whilst we’re still unveiling our alpha at this stage, we’re confident that with our community we’ll continue to grow the game into something truly unique in the MMORPG market,” said JC Bailie, Novaquark CEO.

In order to match the words to the vision, Novaquark announced that all Kickstarter backers no matter their amount of pledge will also be able to join the Alpha allowing the game population to reach over 11.000 players before the end of the year.

While the Alpha 1 launch is the biggest milestone for Dual Universe, this is only the beginning of the journey. The team shared their vision for the Alpha & Beta development.

Players can initiate first contact and join in the Alpha stage by supporting the game on the Dual Universe website.

Traditional approaches in gaming and entertainment are based around companies spending substantial amounts of money to create content, and sell it. Most of the time, players have little influence on the value of the platform, as they passively consume the content, and then move on to another game. Novaquark aims to reverse this logic with its one-of-a-kind technology providing users with a stage to collectively create the content and share it together, at an unprecedented scale. The value of Novaquark comes entirely from its users and the material they generate, giving the power back to them instead of a centralized system.

Beyond its initial release, Dual Universe is set to be a long term continuous development project and will grow with regular updates.

At the heart of Dual Universe is a truly innovative proprietary technology, that was developed to lay the foundations of the game: the CSSC (continuous single-shard cluster) manages one single universe with potentially millions of people interacting in it at the same time, with no loading screen. Coupled with this is an innovative voxel engine enabling players to physically modify the world and foster a persistent, continuous form of reality where meaningful contributions can accumulate.

Dual Universe Gameplay Features

• UNIVERSE (available in test version): The first fully editable universe made for players by players. The only limit is your imagination! Gather your friends and build on a truly epic scale, from ships, cities and space stations, to Lua scripted puzzles and interactive constructs.
• MASSIVE (available in test version): Dual Universe is the first game where potentially millions of players can interact together simultaneously, inside the same giant universe. We call it the Continuous Single Shard Cluster (CSSC) technology. This proprietary technology means no multi-server player separation, instances or loading times, just one enormous, persistent universe.
• EXPLORATION (partially available in test version): Explore & Discover new worlds with your friends, find rare resources and build the greatest place in the universe. Will you be a nomad treasure hunter, or a calculating profiteer?
• ECONOMY (work in progress): Dual Universe will have the most realistic economy system ever made in a game. From weapons and tools, to spaceships and giant space stations, build and trade everything to everyone - at your price - on your own market.
• WARFARE (work in progress): Fight for supremacy, resource control or geostrategic advantage, as you join with fellow players and create your own defense systems, build warships, cities and space stations. Will you defend yourself or lay waste to your enemies?
• POLITICS (work in progress): Be a lone wolf or choose an organization or build your own, hire new players, fight other alliances, cut deals with them or rule your own part of the Universe with this completely open political landscape, full of emergent gameplay opportunities.
• Technological Features
  • Procedurally generated planets, revealed as players explore further and further.
  • 25cm precision voxel technology to modify the environment or construct buildings/ships
  • Unlimited LOD (Level of Detail) technology allows planet-sized construction to be built
  • 64bit Planetary Engine: Smooth transitions from planet surfaces, through atmosphere and into space with no limits to how far the player can travel or see.

Dual Universe is sceduled to launch in 2020.