Newly established developer Build A Rocket Boy is setting out to make a big impression with its first project, EVERYWHERE, a game that looks to bolster players' creativity while delivering fresh experiences. The brief teaser trailer released during Gamescom 2022 got viewers curious about what new game former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies has been working on. Leslie and his team at Build A Rocket Boy invited Screen Rant and other press to tour their studio and see what has been cooking since 2016.
Build A Rocket Boy is finally ready to reveal what EVERYWHERE is actually about and what players can expect when it launches on PC later this year. EVERYWHERE is a free-to-play multiplayer game that will allow players to host, build, play, and share content with each other. One of these projects will be an entirely new cinematic AAA adventure game from Leslie Benzies called MindsEye with a realistic sci-fi tone. However, the third-person gameplay shown during the preview event provided almost as many questions as it did answers.
EVERYWHERE Will Be A Game That Host's More Games
The beginning of the press preview of EVERYWHERE revealed a colorful world with an art style that feels sandwiched between Fortnite and Overwatch. Players can travel between four large biomes, each with their own theme, with the large safe-zone city by the name of Utropia nestled in the middle of it all. The preview didn't take long to melt away the GTA 6 rival idea because EVERYWHERE is almost nothing like GTA.
Many large buildings populate Utropia's main square, including Districts that house areas devoted to Competitive modes, Entertainment Areas, an Art District, and more that plan to release after EVERYWHERE launches later in 2023. Each location hosts a specific function, like allowing players to compete against one another in fast-paced energy weapon-fueled battles, race in completely customized racetracks, or watch short films created by other users. One moment during the preview had the player enter a movie theater setting that hosted a preview of a darker, more realistic game on the screen. After jumping into the screen, the world of EVERYWHERE changed completely into an entirely new game from the mind of Leslie Benzies.
MindsEye Is An Entirely New Game Releasing Inside Of EVERYWHERE
Viewers who saw EVERYWHERE's Gamescon 2022 surprisingly light on details teaser got a glimpse at MindsEye. Equipped with a very different art style than the other gameplay shown during the event, MindsEye seems like a gripping adventure game filled with talented actors and a mysterious sci-fi setting. A short cutscene featured a character waking up in a pod. At the same time, a lone eccentric scientist works to awaken them and acclimate them to the world of the living. The scientist begins talking before the vague cutscene ends without giving more information about what sort of adventure MindsEye will provide.
MindsEye felt like an extreme example of someone posting their creation for other players in EVERYWHERE to enjoy compared to other user-created content players will see in the game. Players will be encouraged to build their own personalized spaces known as Home Arcs. During this part of the event, simple and intuitive creation tools were shown off by designers to construct a Zelda-like dungeon known as a Trial. Camera placements, stage layouts, enemies, and puzzles can be fully tailor-made and shared for others to attempt and even play together.
Players Can Easily Create New Games In EVERYWHERE
Crafting structures and items has become an essential tool in many popular games like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Valheim. EVERYWHERE's creation tools take the best parts of those game's building mechanics to allow players to create almost anything they can think of, including their own bizarre video game boss battles. Structures, shapes, characters, and hitboxes can be copied, pasted, altered, and resized on a whim and saved as a Stamp. Stamps can be shared and combined to help build new parts and gameplay mechanics. If these tools can be put in creative content creators' hands before EVERYWHERE's launch, players can potentially have some exciting designs to explore as soon as they start playing.
EVERYWHERE Will Use Ray Tracing In Advanced New Ways
Build A Rocket Boy has been hard at work since 2016, and in that time, the team has developed new technologies that will help its game stand out above the rest. Early in 2021, some information leaked regarding patents in EVERYWHERE. Those patents revealed the project's plan to host games inside of the game, but that's far from the only new technology BARB has in store for EVERYWHERE. Ray-tracing has often been a tool used to create realistic lighting effects, but BARB is taking it a step further and using that technology to craft immersive sound design like other developers have yet to implement.
Ray-tracing in EVERYWHERE uses hundreds of thousands of digital lines with adaptable sound technology that changes with players' actions. Shooting a weapon in a forest instantly silenced the ambient sounds being made by animals. The digital lines used for ray-tracing can make darkness scarier and detect when players are in a cave or another enclosed environment to create echo effects based on the player's location and actions. Little was shown of the four biomes (Volcano, Canyon, Forrest, and Grasslands), but each will look and sound unique thanks to the new ways BARB has found to use ray-tracing.
The secrecy surrounding EVERYWHERE has been noticeable since its announcement. Worries about the game featuring NFTs or having something to do with a blockchain turned out to be unfounded. Both of the AAA games from the former Grand Theft Auto lead designer are looking to be ambitious and innovative. If it plays its cards right, EVERYWHERE could be more than a game and become a platform that gives young players the tools to create their own games in an accessible way.
Build A Rocket Boy invited Screen Rant to tour its studio and preview EVERYWHERE and MindsEye for the purpose of this article. EVERYWHERE will be releasing on PC in 2023 and consoles on a TBD date.