Spilt Milk Studios has announced that Lazarus is entering continuous open development.
Spilt Milk Studios, independent game developers and creators of Tango Fiesta and A Verdant Hue, announced today that their massively multiplayer space shoot-em-up for Windows PC, Lazarus, is entering continuous open development, running constantly from this point.
“We love classic Japanese arcade shoot-em-ups, and we love Bill Murray films. Putting them together, we got Groundhog Day: Alien Invasion,” said Spilt Milk founder Andrew Smith. “In Lazarus, the players have one week to save the human race, making a last stand in space, bombarded by asteroids. Inevitably, they fail. Then, thanks to a temporal anomaly, humanity’s last week starts again, and then again and again.”
Combining retro top-down shooter style and gameplay with advanced world-building technology, courtesy of London tech startup Improbable, Lazarus puts players in the flight suits of humanity’s finest space pilots, fighting a losing battle in the last week of human civilization – again and again.
That week plays out in real time, in a persistent universe. So, every space station or defence turret you build, every resource you gain from blasting asteroids and every upgrade you make to your ship survives and affects the game for everyone over seven real-world days - whether you are logged in and playing, or not. The trick is discovering, when the Lazarus Effect activates and the world resets, how to take some of those achievements back in time with you for the next fight.
SpatialOS allows a small team to quickly create a huge game: Self-published by Spilt Milk Studios, Lazarus has been built with a team of four in just four months, using Improbable’s SpatialOS platform. By creating the game with SpatialOS technology, each week-long battle in Lazarus can feature up to 2,000 simultaneous players battling across a 160,000 km² arena, dodging millions of asteroids, fragments and alien warships. Be careful, though - some of your fellow players might have gone rogue. Watch your tail engines, or find friends who will watch them for you! Players can register for a free Steam code to play Lazarus, which will also provide access to the final version at Playlazarus.com.