Cube World is BACK? Cube World Omega

https://youtu.be/RBGFTMINI64

Cube World initially released in 2013 with an alpha version of the program.

The “full” version of the game was released in 2019, and was poorly received by long time fans. Some stated problems within Steam reviews were increased difficulty, a convoluted levelling system, and gear and progress being locked to the map rather than to your character.

This May (2023), with surprisingly little fanfare, the creator of Cube World dropped the news that he has taken customer’s experiences into account and has been working on a new version of Cube World. In his personal blog post, linked in the description of this video, he stated that this new Cube World Omega would be developed in the spirit of Cube World Alpha, “but with a new engine and features”. This is exciting news for anyone who has played the Alpha, and you can see some of my gameplay of said Alpha in the background of this video.

But what does this mean, and how long will it take. Ordinarily, rebuilding the game in a new engine (if I’m interpreting this statement correctly), would be a very time-consuming process. But given that Wollay has released clips of gameplay from within Omega, it seems that the majority of the groundwork was already done sometime between 2019 and 2023. This does not mean that it will be out soon, however, because adding features/bug fixing/tweaking can take a significant amount of time. On top of that there may be time taken for marketing, if they don’t want to settle for a silent release. The project is huge in scope and run by a two-person husband-and-wife team, so the development may take more time than players are used to waiting.

Amongst those who have heard the news, feelings are mixed. Cube World has had a long and tumultuous development, and many felt ripped off by the 2019 release.

I personally am both excited and optimistic for the release of Cube World Omega. I loved the Alpha when I first played it, pushing my sad old 2gb ram laptop harder than it’d ever been pushed in its life. And I still love playing it today, thankfully on more competent hardware. I can’t wait to see what Omega has in store.

As can be seen on Wollay’s blog, which I encourage you to check out, we already have information on many of the new features. For instance, it looks like each creature in the game is going to get it’s own signature ability, there’ll be new terrain elements to traverse, and the random generation components of the game will be tweaked.

What are your thoughts on the new Cube World Omega? Did you know about it? Are you excited? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Some relevant links:

https://wollay.com/2023/05/25/new-blog-and-new-project-cube-world-omega/

https://twitter.com/wol_lay