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Tencent subsidiary Polaris Quest has announced a new “vast open-world” game, Light of Motiram, with a Steam page and a ‘to be announced’ release date. The game’s main feature? Mechanical animals (or ‘Mechanimals’, the Steam page suggests), a move borrowed directly from the Horizon Zero Dawn playbook.
It also dares to ask a question that surely plagues many of us: “Why can’t human beings kill God?” though it is circumspect on the exact details of its sci-fi plot.
Light of Motiram also borrows heavily from Horizon Zero Dawn’s setting, proclaiming, “civilization is a distant memory,” and “humanity struggles to rebuild from the dawn of a new primitive era.” The game also promises “precise combat, epic boss fights.”
The mechanical creatures (Fine. The Mechanimals) are extremely similar to the robotic dinosaurs of Guerilla’s beloved Horizon games. They range from placid blue lights to dangerous red, have armored panels you can bash, and while they are undeniably really cool looking, they are very familiar.
After deliberating for a while, Nintendo decided to go after PocketPair (developer of Palworld) not because of how similar a lot of the Pals look to Pokemon, but because the indie developer allegedly used mechanical patents without approval. Perhaps this has emboldened Tencent to move forward with this very Horizon-looking game.
However, H:ZD is not the only game from which Light of Motiram has borrowed homework.
There are over 100 ‘Mechanimals’ that players can supposedly tame, train, and customize for a variety of purposes, giving it a distinct air of Palworld. The game has high hopes for its combat system too, promising “precise dodging, blocking, and counterattacking” all the while your Mechanimals rally around you.
The game can also be played co-operatively with up to 10 players collaborating on the game’s tougher challenges – though there’s no mention of whether these challenges will scale with players or be impossible alone and trivial with 10.
Here come the inevitable survival elements of Light of Motiram
Did someone pass a law while I wasn’t looking that says open-world games have to have survival elements and base-building?
Light of Motiram is very pleased to tell you all about its “realistic physics-based building” and wilderness survival. Clips on the Steam page show the player fishing, mining, and chopping trees (though be careful because they can and will fall on your head, something that was very funny when Valheim did it and remains hilarious now).
Hunt and scavenge for resources and use them to construct your own physics-based structures from treehouses to towers, just don’t make anything too top-heavy or you might be in for a rude visit from Gravity.
There’s no announced release date for this mashup yet, but you can wishlist it now on Steam to keep up to date with its development. Join us in watching with the sort of scepticism that allows room for “mech dinosaurs are still really cool.”
