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Everywhere is a creative suite that aims to let players build their own 3D games – such as shooters, racing games, and platformers – without code. Instead, players can use a developer- and user-created asset library to build and “remix” game worlds, then publish them for other folks to play.
Those creative tools will be available to some people next week, when the closed Builders Beta launches on June 18th.
The trailer above gives you the gist, although there’s a longer 15-minute video that shows the actual creation tools in action. They’re more technical than I was expecting, which is not a bad thing if it means they’re also more flexible in what they allow you to create.
Players build in Everywhere using “Stamps”, which are prefabs, whether an interactive element like a spinning wheel of deadly lasers or an ornamental 3D model. You can place, position, and transform these objects, cobbling together a game world like a collage, from scenery to the enemy NPCs.
Everywhere is the work of Build A Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Menzies. That gives it some pedigree, but I still have a lot of doubts. Fortnite’s creative tools have found an audience because Fortnite itself already had a huge and engaged playerbase. Roblox, through its relative visual simplicity, manages to resist comparisons to more polished, blockbuster games. And Media Molecule’s Dreams, while its playerbase might have been small, had the aesthetic chops to draw in artists and storytellers.
Everything I’ve seen of Everywhere seems to lack creative spark. Instead it’s: hey, what about a racing game, but one that’s worse than any actual racing game? What about a shooter, but one that’s– You get the idea. The cause of the tradeoff is different, but it reminds me of MMOs from the mid-2000s. Auto Assault? Tabula Rasa? APB?
Perhaps I’m too cynical. Everywhere is shiny, and perhaps the draw of being able to build something shiny without needing to code will be enough. All it takes is someone with a striking idea to build something original with it. If that’s you, you can sign up for the beta on the Everywhere site.