Prologue: Go Wayback! is a survival adventure set in the heart of the unknown, where every decision you make determines your fate. You are dropped into a vast, wild landscape, armed with little more than an old, weathered map and the tools necessary to stay alive. Your mission is simple—reach the weather station—but how you get there, and whether you survive the journey, is entirely up to you.

The world is dynamic and unpredictable: the weather can change at a moment’s notice, forcing you to adapt to harsh storms, freezing temperatures, and the relentless forces of nature. You'll need to gather resources, find shelter, forage for food, and keep an eye on the horizon.

The map you hold is guiding you to your goal without telling you how to get there. The world is generated using machine learning technology, meaning every playthrough offers a completely different landscape.

No one will tell you where to go or how to survive. There are no hand-holding mechanics, no fixed paths, and no guarantees.

It’s a world where preparation is key, and improvisation is often the difference between life and death.

Will you find shelter and warmth? Will you have enough food to last? Will the weather turn against you at the worst possible time?

Your ability to read the environment, make the right decisions, and adapt to ever-changing challenges will determine whether you live to see the weather station—or whether the cold hand of death claims you along the way.

Prologue: Go Wayback! is the first step in a new journey for PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions which will culminate in the studio’s ultimate goal: project ‘Artemis’. Prologue combines Unreal Engine with custom machine-learning (ML) to generate maps and can generate millions of different maps with realistic terrain for players to explore. An evolution of this technology will be a highly specialized in-house game engine, 'Melba' which will be incorporated in the two games to follow Prologue, including a yet-to-be-announced title and project ‘Artemis’ — a massive sandbox world designed for emergent interactions, player creativity, and ultimate freedom.

PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions’ first game, Prologue: Go Wayback!, invites players into a gorgeous and daunting wilderness as it  enters Early Access on Steam and the Epic Games Store ($19.99, €19.99).

Start your journey with the above Early Access Announce Trailer, which showcases several new features coming to the game’s Early Access debut that offer players more variety and greater control over the conditions faced while trying to complete their run.

The Early Access release of Prologue: Go Wayback! marks a significant step forward in the development of Project Artemis, PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions' long-term mission to create and deliver a technology and platform that enables creation and emergent play at a massive scale.

The studio has worked with the community via playtests and an open beta to improve the emergent survival experience, and today’s Early Access launch brings several new modes and customization features to players:

• Custom Game Settings: Set the weather, time of day, world temperature, and customize gameplay settings to decide how easy or hard your odds of survival will be.
• Game Modes: Play the default “Go Wayback!” mode and chart your path to the Weather Tower. Challenge yourself in “Objective: Survive” and try to endure with limited resources for as long as possible, or take it easy with “Free Roam” mode, where the only risk of death is falling down a cliff.
• Map Editor: Draw your own map design, or import an image into the in-game Map Editor, and let the game generate a custom world for you to explore.

The studio has also released its Early Access roadmap with planned updates for deeper gameplay and survival systems, enhanced natural environments, new weather types, and more ways to play and further customize the game to empower player choice.

Early Access Roadmap

"From our very first playtest, your feedback has been crucial to our progress, and we truly want to create a game that feels like it belongs to you. With the Early Access release right around the corner, we want to give you a look at what we are currently planning for development during Early Access."

World Updates

Updates that add realism, scale, and cohesion to the world.

• Paths, trails, and infrastructure that make navigation clearer and the world feel more coherent.

• Enhanced river systems with source, tributaries, rapids, and deltas, bringing new movement and life to the world.

• Biomes that become deeper and more varied, creating richer atmosphere and discovery.

• Dynamic weather systems that shift how each journey feels.

• More varied settlements that make inhabited places feel alive and distinct.

• Water that freezes and thaws with weather and seasons, changing how you move and survive.

Gameplay & Survival

Updates to enrich your experience, expand creative freedom, and deepen survival and exploration.

• Creative building that uses found materials with full freedom of expression.

• New ingredients and recipes that make food and fire a deeper part of survival.

• Full climbing gear and systems that allow you to scale cliffs and explore vertical spaces.

• Batteries and repairable power systems that bring energy management into survival.

• Fuel for lamps, generators, and devices that adds management, maintenance, and discovery to how energy powers the world.

• Containers that can hold water, fuel, and other liquids for more flexible storage and interaction, creating deeper realism.

• Clothing that degrades and can be repaired, adding wear, character, and deepening survival through maintenance and resourcefulness.

• A growing toolset and more player driven survival gear that enhances exploration and gameplay.

Additional Game Updates

New ways to customize the world, controller support & content sharing.

• New game modes for new kinds of play, with freeform exploration, timed survival, and emerging challenges that test how you adapt, endure, and explore.

• Opening of the game’s systems for players to create, customize, and share their own worlds, allowing new rules, maps, and experiences to emerge from the community.

• Full controller support to make exploration, survival, and creation feel natural and fluid.

• Optimisation for Steam Deck, with performance and controls tuned for handheld play so the world can travel with you.

• Twitch integration that lets audiences influence the world voting on weather, spawns, and other events to shape each player’s journey.

• In-game camera mode for virtual photography.

We hope you are excited about what is in the pipeline, because we definitely are.

The Early Access release of Prologue: Go Wayback! marks a significant step forward in the development of Project Artemis, PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions' long-term mission to create and deliver a technology and platform that enables creation and emergent play at a massive-scale.

To produce the technology to power Project Artemis, the independent studio is developing its own in-house Melba engine, which can be explored in the continuously updated playable tech demo, Preface: Undiscovered World.

As the first of three planned titles, Prologue: Go Wayback! is designed to be a standalone single-player game experience built around the studio’s technological progress to create realistic terrain generation at scale. Prologue: Go Wayback! is powered by the studio’s research into machine learning (ML) models to generate base terrain maps in Unreal Engine 5, which are then populated procedurally with custom assets such as trees, rivers, rocks, cliffs, hills, and shelters. 

A proprietary machine-learning model generates 64km2 maps that appear both natural and realistic, and is trained on publicly available open-source terrain data and vetted to prevent the use of any copyrighted material.

Key Features:

• Explore a detailed world where emergent systems subtly influence gameplay
• Face unpredictable weather and ever-changing landscapes as you strive to escape the wilderness
• Advanced ML terrain generation ensures every session offers a slightly different experience with stunning views and diverse terrain
• Prepare: Use your environment and the tools you find to your advantage.
• Travel: Traverse the vast open world in search of food and shelters.
• Take Shelter: Shield yourself from extreme weather conditions affecting your stats. But don’t stay in too long. Use them instead to prepare for your next journey.
• Fix: Repair items and buildings you find on your way.
• Escape: Your ultimate goal is to reach the weather station and call for help.

In Prologue, you’re not just surviving. You’re exploring the wild, unknown, and trying to make it to your destination. How you get there is a story only you can tell.

Prologue: Go Wayback! is in development for PC (Steam / Epic Games Store).