For the past little while, Fantastic Pixel Castle head Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street has been discussing the Project Ghost blue zones – the parts of the game that feature randomly generated maps and adventures for soloers or small groups to tackle in order to get shinies for heading out into the more MMO-like red zones. Understandably, procedural generation leads many gamers to leap to a few conclusions, which led to Street taking to Twitter to talk about it in a thread. And we don’t mean the thread he wrote about raising chickens.
“I’ve often described the blue zone feature as random maps from Age of Empires. This makes some people think of extreme proc gen, which is not really what we’re going for,” Street explains. “It’s more like roguelike variation for each level, without the permadeath.”
The post then transformed into a sort of impromptu Q&A session that helps better contextualize the system in question.
- When asked how blue zone levels are any different from procedural ARPG levels, Street explained that it’s less about applying monster affixes and more about a handcrafted feel.
- As for the generated items itself, another reply points out how blue zones will have hand-crafted POIs while the terrain linking them is procedural.
- He also explains that Ghost is not a sandbox. “Sandbox in MMO usually means setting up a bunch of systems and expecting players to go out and find the fun. Usually no quests etc. That’s not what we are doing,” he writes.
- Finally, a pair of other replies make what Street considers more accurate comparisons to blue zone generation, referencing Civilization and “a fantasy Helldivers” in terms of how these maps are created.
As for Ghost itself, the game’s testing continues and players are acting up in the best ways by literally rickrolling FPC and using creative ways of clearing exploding crystals. Also we point out how one fan suggested that every map should have a shiny chicken hiding for players to find; we’re not sure any of the devs are reading this, but if they are, we wholeheartedly support this idea.
