Minecraft Console Developer 4J Studios Announces Survival Sandbox Game Reforj - News

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Developer 4J Studios, the studio that works on the console versions of Minecraft, and Youtuber Joseph 'Stampy' Garrett have announced survival sandbox game Reforj.

"The fact this is coming from 4J means that the comparisons to Minecraft are unavoidable," Garrett told GamesIndustry. "We've already had articles about 4J making Minecraft 2. But that's not what we're trying to do. Despite all of us being huge fans of Minecraft, we don't need to make another one. It already exists."

4J founder and chairman Chris van der Kuyl added, "Everyone has to have a frame of reference. But it will be a very different gameplay experience, That doesn't mean they will still play the games they play and love every day. They will. That's something we revel in. We still have a marketplace in Minecraft. This is just something brand new for people who love the genre, and we don't think they've had anything new for quite a long time.

"We have zero targets. We don't think we should have X players by a certain date. Because we're a small company, we don't have a massive day one shipping title. As long as there is a community that love this game and gives us feedback, then it will snowball from there. If we can see we're making an impact on how people play this genre and what they enjoy, the audience will come with that."

4J Studios hired Garrett because they are taking a community-focused approach with Reforj. 

"In the 1990s we believed that game developers were the new rockstars… but I actually think we're more like Fender and Gibson," said van der Kuyl. "We make musical instruments, and we have people like Joe taking those instruments and playing tunes on them that we didn't think possible. We're looking to this generation of creatives, and this will be the most creator-friendly game out there, to take our game and show us journeys and stories, and find things in our games that we didn't think were there.

"Joe has things like his Bonus Points podcast, and it means we have someone on the team who is as connected to the community as anybody could be. We've already had the first group of YouTubers we know in the studio, and as soon as possible there will be a pre-alpha version to play."

4J Studios started working on a brand-new game's engine called Elements Engine five years ago.

"We started on the Elements Engine about five years ago," said van der Kuyl. "The obvious question is that Unity and Unreal have taken over the market, so why do this? Well, we love creative sandbox gaming. And we realised that nobody had really thought about features that you'd want to be accelerated by next gen that would benefit sandbox gaming. Of course we want nice graphics and shiny water. But there were opportunities around using GPU acceleration for something different.

"Generally when you get these block building games, or voxel-based games, they start to get performance restrictive quite early. So we asked ourselves, could we build an engine that gave you persistent 60-frames-per-second in this kind-of game. It may be a geeky thing to say, but for a player it would transform their experience."

The Xbox Series S is the baseline console for Reforj, which means it won't release on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, or Xbox One.

"It does mean that people who have older generations won't be able to play Reforj, but we think that number will be less and less," stated van der Kuyl. "And the tax to pay for features that we couldn't support in order to get 60 frames per second… other games are going to have to pay that tax for some time because they are compatible with those older platforms going forward.

"We've got no fixed plans to come to mobile today, but we know that mobile will catch-up with that architecture. Apple's latest announcement… it's different architecture to PC and console, but it is pretty powerful. This gives us a place to build from and we're not hamstrung by the past."

Garrett added, "It's not just about us looking at ray-tracing. It's about… the world's saves being really efficient. It is this big sandbox world, but it doesn't save the world, it just saves the changes you made to the world, so it means that the world saves are really small and can load really efficiently. We have gateways in the world where you can travel to other worlds and create new ones, and it all links seamlessly. It wouldn't be possible if you're loading data off a harddrive. [This engine] is not just adding bells and whistles to the game, it is about core design function and mechanism that is made possible by having Xbox Series S as the baseline."

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

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