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Face of Mankind releases development documentary
The scrappy little Kickstarter sandbox, Face of Mankind, sees its journey from conception to completion as an odyssey worth sharing. That's why the team has put together a talking head documentary video that chronicles the game's development since 2001. The video itself is long on developer and player anecdotes, although it is short on actual in-game footage (this is probably not surprising considering that the team is rebuilding the engine from scratch). If you have 15 minutes and want to see how an indie MMO is made, check out the documentary after the jump!
Face of Mankind releases from-scratch engine tech demo
As part of its in-progress Kickstarter campaign, Face of Mankind is planning for funding beyond its original $50k goal. One of the stretch goals -- at $250k -- is to build an entirely new game engine with brand new art assets. And to help show off what we could expect with that new engine, Nexeon Technologies has released a tech demo video. The video spotlights an interesting marriage of futuristic sci-fi structures with natural environments, without allowing one style to overcome the other. It also shows the night and day cycles, where Creative Director Marko Dieckmann explains that the contrast between the two will be much more significant than most other MMOs, allowing darkness to provide an "interesting strategy to combat." With 23 days to go in the Kickstarter campaign, the company is currently at around the halfway mark for their 30-day goal, so we'll be watching this stretch goal with particular interest. [Thanks to everyone who tipped us on this!]
Face of Mankind: Rebirth bites the dust and NanoVerse Online announced
It has been declared that Face of Mankind: Rebirth is indefinitely canceled, the statement citing a lack of financial resources as the primary cause. Face of Mankind had its trials and tribulations, it launched back in 2006 and was plagued with bugs and many players found the gameplay difficult. It still managed to gather a small supportive playerbase and remained in operation until the official portal was hit by a series of denial of service attacks all throughout May, 2007. The attacks played a factor in the game's eventual closure in November, 2007, the perpetrators were later identified and arrested by the Scotland Yard computer crime unit. Duplex Systems, an already small development team, announced an attempt to continue support, add a bevy of new game mechanics, and relaunch the game as Face of Mankind: Rebirth if a publisher could be found.While it's sad to witness the death of one MMOG that wanted to live again, not all is lost from Face of Mankind. Duplex Systems has announced plans on a new MMOG entitled NanoVerse Online.
