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There’s a certain feeling that only the best space games manage to evoke. It comes in titles like Elite Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, Eve Online – and yes, even Starfield, on occasion. It’s that feeling of vulnerability, of being tiny in a vast cosmos, and you find it sitting in your spaceship like a precious diamond hanging in the frozen emptiness of space. CCP Games’ next title, Eve Frontier, looks like it’ll capture that feeling in spades, and it’s got plenty of other things to get excited about, too.
Eve Frontier is set to head in a completely different direction than either Eve Online or FPS Eve Vanguard. A space-based survival game, you play as someone waking up after a lengthy sleep in stasis, finding yourself adrift in a lawless, chaotic region of the universe known as the Frontier. Civilization is a long-distant memory and what remains of it are the last beacons of light in a universe gone dark. Robotic drones are attempting to hunt you down, and natural terrors like black holes crowd the night sky; all in all, it’s not looking great.
There are several different pillars to how Eve Frontier will play, with survival, spaceship piloting, trading, and programming – yes, programming – all working together to increase your odds of staying alive in this hostile region. Much like Eve Online it appears you’ll be bound to your ship, but in a more hands-on way – piloting your ship directly into dogfights, sneaking into areas filled with enemies, or turning perfect arcs around space stations. You’ll need to upgrade your ship to stay competitive and alive, harvesting key natural resources such as those found around black holes in order to get the juice you need to power up. With every player existing together on the same server, you’ll need every advantage you can get.
One innovation Eve Frontier promises to bring to the survival space is rebuilding civilization from the ground up. You’ll be building infrastructure to harvest materials, selling gear to other players, or constructing your defenses. These constructions are known as Smart Assemblies, and they can be reprogrammed to serve your specific needs using coding language Solidity. Every building has a programmable layer which you can use to ensure they work the way you want, turning them into quest hubs, marketplaces, arcade machines – and everything in between.
Something else that looks like it’ll set Eve Frontier apart is its monetization system, which is completely open to real world transactions and sales. Unlike Eve Online, there will be no restrictions on real-money transactions, with players being free to sell whatever they want, wherever and however they want to.
This is where a concern comes in, however, as Eve Frontier appears to be embracing cryptocurrency. The coding language it uses for its Smart Assemblies runs on Ethereum, with the game’s currencies also being based on ERC-20 tokens, meaning cryptocurrency is woven into the game’s fabric throughout. That, combined with the free-for-all on allowing all transactions speaks to a certain Libertarian ideology threaded into the game, which does mesh with its space-frontier approach, but may prove to be a turnoff for some.
Eve Frontier does not have a release date yet – CCP Games will be sharing more news later in 2024. Until then, you can head over to the game’s official site to learn more.
Should you be unable to wait that long for your next favorite experience, our guides to the best space games and the best multiplayer games will keep you in fine company for a long time to come.
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