Project Spark: Little Hype, Lots to Like

By gamers, for gamers...

Relatively speaking, destruction always seems so much more popular than creation. For every Minecraft, SimCity, or Viva Pinata, there are dozens of variations on Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Skyrim. Thankfully, Microsoft's Team Dakota is still hard at work at Project Spark, a new game that allows players to craft their own worlds and create their own missions and game types.
At first glance, it's understandable that some might think of Project Spark as just an editor. The sculpting and painting tools are usually up front in any of the presentations of the game. Starting with a flat, featureless world, players essentially paint on the terrain using a variety of brushes. Some expand the terrain, others reduce it. Some roughen the features, others smooth them out. One of the coolest brushes allows players to actually cut through the geometry, creating tunnels, caves, and other interior spaces. Creators can adjust the size, shape, and intensity of each of these brushes, allowing for both quick creation and loads of fine control.

Once the shape of the world is set, another set of brushes allow players to cover the land with textures and props. Use the temperate palette and you'll be laying down trees and flowers and grass. The palettes even understand the orientation of the level geometry, so you'll paint roots on the underside of surfaces and rocks on the vertical faces. The brushes will also drop down random features, such as trees, as you move along. The other palettes available in the demo include desert and arctic terrain. Microsoft has suggested that further sets might be part of a DLC or micro-transaction plan.

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At any point you can jump in and test the level as you're creating it.

From there, you can place all variety of props, from trolls to tombstones to cottages to crossbows. Each element can be adjusted in terms of size and orientation, so you can get just the look you want for your levels. At any point you can jump in and test the level as you're creating it, ensuring that the sight lines and distances are all exactly where you want them.

Once you're done with that, you can begin to create your own game types. The scripting logic is all very visual and intuitive. It's based entirely on simple "If X, then Y" statements, which allow players not only to manage the interaction of objects in the world, but also the game's controls. You could, for instance, have RB switch the camera to first-person, or make it so that every time you hit the Y button, you throw a house. The whole system goes as deep as you want it to, so you could even create rules for your own games. Among the demos we saw were recreations of Geometry Wars, an aerial race, and a Final Fantasy-like RPG. You can even use the logic to link together different worlds you've created and swap among game types.

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The scripting logic is all very visual and intuitive.

If all this seems a bit intimidating, Team Dakota will ease you into things with a guided creation mode that will work as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure book. You'll be asked at the start where you want the adventure to take place and what time of day you'd like it to be. Within seconds, you'll have loaded up either a nighttime desert with a winding river, or a tranquil morning in a storybook forest. From there, you decide who your hero is and what the objective is and where it's found. The game plops all these elements down at once and will even toss in some sidequests along the way.

Naturally with all the creativity in the hands of the players, Microsoft is taking the moderation and promotion of offensive content seriously. There will be an open list where players will need to flag objectionable content for further review by Microsoft. Parents can limit their kids to a server that contains only Microsoft-approved content.
Project Spark is quietly one of the more impressive games we've seen this year. We're still waiting to hear more details on cooperative creation, Kinect support, and user created art assets, so you can be sure that we'll be checking in with the team between now and the game's Xbox One launch-window release.