Author Archives: shawnkoh

Devast.io

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Website: https://devast.io/

Devast.io is a 2D web-based online survival game.
It was developed by two indie developers, LapaMauve, who have also built several other web-based “.io” games.
It’s similar to games like Rust and DayZ.

There are no objectives.
You spawn in a harsh environment with nothing.
To survive, you have to battle the cold, stave off hunger and defend against ghouls who actively pursue you at night.

Farm resources, craft, or build a base.

The longer you survive, the stronger the ghouls.
And most importantly, the more attractive your loot is to other players.

Players join persistent* live servers.
When you die (or log off), you drop all your inventory and all your buildings gets destroyed.

Elemental Tetrad
Technology
The client was developed using Javascript with libraries like [GitHub – schteppe/p2.js: JavaScript 2D physics library](https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js).
The backend runs on NodeJS.

Mechanics
* Destructible environments.
* Crafting and resource gathering.
* Proximity text chats (you can only see messages of people nearby you).
* Linear projectiles (e.g. bullets)

Story
There is no official “story”.
The stories in the game are formed by the players — their meta-relationships.

Aesthetics
The graphics are simple.
Audio is used sparingly. Only player interactions e.g. shooting, gathering, as well as environment effects (radiation).

The aesthetics are designed to help manage the player’s attention.
Devast.io is a tense game. At any moment, you can be killed and lose all your progress.
The slightest distraction can be game ending.
It’s imperative that they be minimised, and Devast accomplishes this very well.

Lens of Competition vs Cooperation
* Resources regenerate every day/night cycle.
* Rare resources are located in small zones to encourage competition (and cooperation).
* Rare resources are also located in radioactive zones, encouraging cooperation (who can form a team strong enough to defend the zone and get ahead?)

Lens of Time
Being an ephemeral browser-based game where your progress gets reset the moment you die or log off, the game’s pace has to be **fast**.
The day and night cycle only lasts 15 minutes.

* Daytime is for farming and gathering.
* Players are hunted by ghouls (NPC enemies) at night.

Lens of Expected Value
* Crates are scattered throughout the map, that have a chance of spawning rare loot (e.g. weapons).

Lens of Imagination
* Build anywhere, destroy anything.
* Many possible strategies to attack and defend (e.g. building walls around a player’s base to starve them)

Microsoft Mesh – Metaverse as a social construct

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The Metaverse is a social construct.
It only exists because we collectively deem it so.
We invent complex economic systems, written and spoken modes of communication, so that we can better cooperate as a species.
We construct laws, conform to social norms so that we require less overhead when collaborating with one another.
Simple acts like buying food from a restaurant requires a complex supply chain powered by collaboration that is only made possible by such systems.

At the heart of all such systems is connection, which this demo emphasise deeply on.

It paints a future where the Metaverse, expressed in various forms, lives closely in harmony with our work.
It focuses deeply on showing how it “gets out of the way” when it’s no longer required.
It shows how it can be additive, preferring mixed reality over completely immersive experiences frequently found in VR demos.

I really like how it makes use of a sentimental soundstage to further generate resonance.

While it helps to paint a harmonious future, it doesn’t actually educate the audience what Microsoft Mesh is.
I think that should be improved by adapting the scenes to directly show what role Mesh plays.