Build a Rocket Boy, the new studio of former GTA lead developer Leslie Benzies, has announced the futuristic action game MindsEye. This game is played through Everywhere, a Roblox-like service where players can create games.
The short teaser shows how the presumed protagonist has received an implant behind his ear, with which he can control a robot remotely. That implant, the MindsEye, seems to have been placed against his will. Furthermore, several action scenes can be seen, such as a fragment in which soldiers get out of a helicopter and the protagonist shoots at another car from the window of a car.
MindsEye can be played via Everywhere, a service that Build a Rocket Boy announced at Gamescom last year. Everywhere is a service in which the focus seems to be on content created by users. Everywhere focuses on the social hub of Utropia, a futuristic city surrounded by biomes such as volcanoes and canyons, writes VideoGamesChronicle, among others.
Utropia has four districts, including a Combat and Racing District. In these districts, players can play Quake-style deathmatches and race in futuristic buggies. Players can also create their own levels in these districts. For example, the developer showed a level in which players have to shoot enemies and hit switches, after which the level fills with water. Users can create those levels with the developer created creation suite ARC-postpone.
In the Creation District, players can share created games, levels, or smaller objects with each other. Special or popular levels are shown in the Collection District. The Entertainment District again consists of smaller rooms, including a cinema, a DJ part, a museum with concept art and the Game Lobby. MindsEye should soon be playable in that Game Lobby.
Everywhere
Build a Rocket Boy emphasizes that MindsEye will be separate from Everywhere and sees the two concepts largely separate. Everywhere will be a game that will be released in different chapters, with one chapter focusing more on single player and the other on multiplayer. Users could use assets from MindsEye for Everywhere.
It is not immediately clear how Build a Rocket Boy’s revenue model works, although the developer says it is against pay-to-win and NFTs. Paying for cosmetic improvements “is more obvious,” Leslie Benzies told the gaming medium. Presumably MindsEye also gets paid.
Leslie Benzies was the lead developer at Rockstar North until 2016 and worked on all GTA games from Grand Theft Auto III, up to GTA V and GTA Online. He left the studio in early 2016 after being on leave for two years. That departure was not amicable and Benzies later demanded $ 150 million in lost royalties. After leaving, he started Build a Rocket Boy, which is co-funded by NetEase. Everywhere should be released in beta this year. It is not yet known when MindsEye will be released.
