Indie game developer Whalebox Studios brought their new title, Goliath, to the E3 floor. Existing in a procedural generated open world, Goliath is a craft-centric action title with a focus on player made robots. Using resources found in the sandbox, players will create increasingly advanced robots to pilot when combating larger monsters.
The world you inhabit is an amalgamation of different societies and time periods, lending to a map that can be drastically different in various spots. Portals are a large part of transportation as well, often not activated until you complete a couple quest lines. You’ll encounter different factions born of the diverse species from the collected worlds and even be able to align yourself with specific ones for unique gear and schematics. A few quests were shown but things aren’t 100% set in stone as the team continues negotiations with a writer for the main campaign. No name could be shared, but they’re courting an award winning comic book writer that could bring a great deal to the table for them.
The highlight of the games, the massive robots themselves, have many different forms. The wooden humanoid type mech seems to be the first you can create, but it won’t become irrelevant as you progress. Each different robot can be upgraded and they also have unique responses to environmental elements. For example, an extremely hot location may cause your wooden mech to catch fire and be damaged while also enhancing your stone golem type robot with heat attacks.
The control style and point of view is reminiscent of many survival adventure type games, but forgoes survival elements in favor of focus on resource gathering. This move will potentially keep the pacing at an uptempo and keep players engaged. Also, when you use certain abilities more than others you can learn new builds that specialize in your play style. This will also get things moving by encouraging you to get out and fight as oppose to just hoarding and building.
The developers expressed their admiration for the Borderlands franchise and it seems that love will be apparent not only in the open environments, but in the multi-player that’s in development. It will be a drop-in-drop-out style that will have enemies and gear scale. They couldn’t offer much more detail than that, but more info will hopefully be coming soon.
Goliath is a fun idea that has potential to stand out in a crowded market once they get things finalized and polished. What I saw was a game with a lot of heart made by a team that was truly passionate and excited about their title. The beginnings are ambitious and include the typical things expected from the genre: Day/Night cycle, free roaming, multi-player, customized home bases, and more. The Kickstarter launching in July could open up even more options on top of seeing their goals realized as well. Look out for Goliath for Linux, PC, Mac, and on the Steam ecosystem in 2016.
