Xenominer: An interesting spin on Voxel Sandbox Gaming

[Andellmere]

With the popularity, and more importantly the monetary success, of Minecraft, sandbox games of building and destroying exploded across many platforms. Early on, Xbox got Fortresscraft which was a poor substitute indeed.
More recently, we got Minecraft: Xbox360 Edition, which, although closer to what we wanted, was also a poor substitute as it went back to before any of the interesting bits of survival appeared, such as hunger and animal taming, but didn't give us creative mode to let us run around and do as we wished. But infinitely more important was one simple fact: The world size is arbitrarily set. You cannot change how big the world is and trying to leave the defined world runs you into an invisible wall.
Minecraft, with part of it's claim to fame being it's infinite world to explore, had instead become finite.
And besides, let's face facts, after the initial scare and learning to build your empire, vanilla Minecraft can be rather boring for the less artistically inclined of us.

With even Minecraft becoming finite due to the lack of processing power on the 360, I had essentially given up hope on finding something like MC is on the PC. And then I downloaded the Xenominer demo.
There are no enemies in Xenominer, nothing hunts you during the night and other than one anomalous structure there is no sign of life on the moon that the story places you on after your ship crash landed with you as the only survivor.
Accompanied by the occasional comment from DAI-SE, the disembodied voice of the ship's AI, you have to find oxygen and set up a base camp to survive and expand DAI-SE's processing power. Sounds like an easy ride, right? Wrong.
Unlike MC, where the night is dangerous due to the creatures that wander it, the moon of Xenominer is practically an enemy all on it's own. Despite the 'mineral-rich' description, you'll often find yourself hunting desperately for the one mineral that you have practically none of(copper in my case), whilst trying to juggle expanding DAI-SE's ability to produce better gear for you to use to hunt minerals with and expanding your storage space to cram all the crap you dig up into while you try to find a use for it.
And before you plan any long treks along the surface there's an important note you need to read: You're on a moon, which has no atmosphere. Besides a lack of oxygen, this also means that there's no real magnetosphere. And that means that you'll be doing vampire impersonations, because the radiation will kill you dead.
And all of this with an infinite world size.
Combining that all together has made Xenominer a rather fun thing to play around with and it's got a practically perfect price at 80 MSpoints. In other words, all that for only a buck.

Thoughts?

[Shengji]

enoMiner developer Jesse Nivens says the team plans to foster in future updates:

"We do want to add more survival aspects to the game, and right now our focus in that area is in adding aliens. We also want to improve the survival experience by allowing the player to build shelters that can evolve into something much bigger, and the first step in bringing that to the game is with sealed rooms with breathable oxygen and environmental protection."

<B>You've said that adding enemies is at the top of your to-do list. What inspirations are you looking at for potential mobs? Are you going for Alien-style cat-and-mouse encounters? Or more frantic action, like Halo? </B>
Rod Runnheim: Xenos just lends itself to mystery and suspense, and is already starting to have an Alien vibe. We want to play on that, but we also want to introduce opponents that challenge a team of players. Eventually, once the nature of an opponent is understood, it can be neutralized. So, we're coming up with ways to make sure the player is forced onto the monsters' turf, instead of the other way around. There will be a place for defenses and pitched battles, but we fully intend to make deep dark places an intense experience.

This game looks like it has some real potential, are there plans for it to come to PC do we know?

[Rianaru]

Man, that might actually push me to hook up my xbox to the internet finally. Sounds really interesting.

[Ulfengaard]

Oh dear. *eyes his poor broken XBox* Don't suppose they have plans to port any tjme soon?

[gftweek]

Looks like PC version could be coming but not for a while yet:

Will you be doing a PC version?

Because XNA runs on PC natively (well, with some .NET packages), it is very likely we will release a PC version sometime in the medium term. We are currently focusing on the Xbox experience and multiplayer and will continue to put our energies there until we are satisfied with its progress.

[Rianaru]

You guys should take a look at their other stuff too. Especially this:

http://www.gristmillstudios.com/zpoc/

[Detritus]

You guys should take a look at their other stuff too. Especially this:

http://www.gristmillstudios.com/zpoc/

Signed up for the Alpha/Beta of this :)

[duartemad]

More recently, we got Minecraft: Xbox360 Edition, which, although closer to what we wanted, was also a poor substitute as it went back to before any of the interesting bits of survival appeared, such as hunger and animal taming, but didn't give us creative mode to let us run around and do as we wished.

This is how minecraft should have stayed like. The hunger and the animal taming are kinda lame in vMC (on my side at least, not btw :D)
Xenominer is an awesome game I agree 100%.
I would love to see a PC copy of it!