Minecraft. Yeah, its the elephant in the room that casts a humungous shadow on developing in this space. Why create a new voxel world game when Microsoft has nailed the brief (by buying Mojang)? In truth, I wrestle with this question on what seems like a monthly basis. Indeed I have all but stopped dabbling in Minecraft in case it has any adverse influence on my design or gameplay decisions.
It comes down to a very simple premise. I am a coder. I have spent hours upon hours of my life writing code, tinkering with code, sleeping on thoughts about code. This hopefully has helped me be better at developing software. What it has not done is made me a good artist. I don’t have enough time in my life to dedicate to a new skill like learning pixel art, graphic design or 3D modelling. I wonder if Notch was in the same quandary when he developed Minecraft in Java back in the day.
Regardless, as a solo indie developer, any shortcut that helps me move away from the requirement to create my own art or high poly model assets the better. Voxel-based worlds move the onus away from lots of complicated art assets to box-like models and procedural generation that focus on gameplay. The blocky grid-based creativity and destructible environments in such worlds also seems quite natural to PC gamers and is built into the art style. This is in contrast to polygon terrain deformation or building on non-gridded continuous terrain elevation in some other games that can at times feel a bit more clunky, for the sake of customisability or prettier graphics.
Considerations I faced when starting on Soul Invictus, in choosing to use a voxel based world system:
Pros:
- Does not require much art creation or direction to get a good looking voxel world up and running
- Can be used to easily generate random environments
- Voxel based world systems can be used to create unending sandbox worlds based on seeded parameter sets
- Voxel based worlds lend themselves to destructible environments
- Allows for simpler character models in the art style
Cons:
- Any game using the style could be written off as just a “minecraft clone”
- Reduces the opportunity for beautiful environments and high end graphics
- Game style may put off players as lacking depth or childlike.
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