In-development survival sandbox Life Beyond has made a couple of big strides in its latest update, not the least of which is the addition of construction, which replaces pre-built single purpose structures.
It all starts with the Printer tool, which first places down a free hologram of a room to help plan the layout of a settlement. After that, individual holograms can be finalized with the Printer tool, which lets players pour resources into the build to make it come to reality. Incidentally, multiple players can add resources to a hologram for a bit more cooperation.
As for interior design, functional units like AI cores, storage, and refineries can only be placed in building rooms. Each type of functional unit takes up a number of slots, and the number of slots are determined by the size of each room (small, medium, or large). There are also energy needs for constructs to consider, which will incur some eventual decay if energy needs aren’t met. The specifics are all outlined in the relevant dev blog.
The update has also officially renamed the game’s planet Saren to Seren, introduced a new player experience, hoverboards, and a Zipline ammo system, and has also entirely turned off open PvP for the time being; PvP will be coming back, but in a far more controlled form in the interest of engendering cooperation. “Creating a new society shouldn’t mean straight up recreating what’s worst about ours,” reasons the post. “It’s important for us to do this right, so until we can do this justice, we prefer to put the whole system on hold.”
If Life Beyond happens to have dropped off of your radar, it’s a SpatialOS sandbox MMO that first started life as Project C and has since gone on to be in our list of MMOs to watch in 2020.
