Ion, the space survival game by Dean Hall and Improbable, is dead

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

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"Look, games get paused, cancelled, pulled back all the time..."

 

By Robert Purchese Published 07/03/2017

 

There is no bigger stage to announce a video game on than a platform holder's E3 press conference, and in 2015, Dean Hall, creator of DayZ, stepped onto Microsoft's stage to announce his new game Ion.

 

"I want a game that is not a game," he said. "I want a game that is a universe. A universe built not on scripts or quests, but on the laws of physics, biology, and chemistry. A simulation MMO that explores mankind's expansion into space; the chance to be a pioneer in a harsh universe swamped with the risk of death yet peppered with the havens of fortune."

 

It was a prototype Hall said he had been working on for a year, and would be a collaboration between RocketWerkz, Hall's studio in New Zealand, and Improbable, a company with an ambitious SpatialOS game engine, in London.

 

A trailer blurb for Ion read:

 

From the creator of DayZ and inspired by the cult favourite Space Station 13, Ion is an emergent narrative massively-multiplayer online game in which players will build, live in and inevitably die in huge floating galactic constructions as humanity makes its first steps colonising the universe.

 

Technology from Improbable allows Ion to have a massive interconnected universe with fully simulated environments such as power grids, air pressure and heat - all to help stave off the unending vacuum of space.

Ion was to come first to PC and the Xbox One Game Preview Program. No release date was announced.

 

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