Rising World (JIW-Games)

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Website
Check out the official Rising World Website

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Give the developers feedback on the Steam Discussion Page

Purchase
Buy your Early Access copy on the Steam Store page 

After the success of Doom, every new game released with a first person perspective and guns were quickly labeled “Doom clones” despite whatever other merits they might have had. Thankfully people soon realized how stupid this practice was and instead recognized the first person shooter as a genre. However, here we are, many years later and every open world sandbox game with crafting involved is labeled as a “Minecraft clone.” Dismissing Rising World this way would be a mistake though, as despite the fact that the game is still in early access, it is already showing a lot of promise.

The first thing we noticed about Rising World while taking the early access version for a spin is how good the game already looks, especially on the highest detail settings. From the lush vegetation to the sunlight streaming through the tree canopy, Rising World is definitely progressing nicely in the visual department. The randomly generated environments look great and thanks to the detailed textures also look very realistic. Everything from lightscattering, lightglare, ambient occlusion, refractions and depth of field to environment mapping, specular lighting and more can be toggled from the graphics menu. The field of view can also be adjusted and the game features a day/night cycle. Objects, such as trees, are susceptible to physics, so if you chop one down you can expect it to topple over and roll down any slopes instead of simply hovering in mid-air. It’s still early access, so prepare for some clipping issues when exploring caves and a couple of visual anomalies here and there, such as animals stuck in the scenery.

Environments are randomly generated and you can choose between normal, superflat or even surreal world types, as well as whether you want caves or vegetation. In addition to the creative and survival modes the game will also feature stranded and adventure modes sometime in the future. Of course, the game can be played in either single or multi-player mode, with the developers focusing on making the latter cheat free. For example, your inventory is stored server side to prevent anyone from messing around with it.

Crafting is very easy and there is already a ton of stuff that you can create. With more than 200 different building materials the game also allows you to unleash your full creative potential. In fact, my first few hours with the game was spent simply messing around with all the interactive objects, such as the piano which can be used to actually play tunes.

Rising World has been receiving a steady stream of updates since its release and the developers show no sign of slowing down. One of the previous updates added hunger and thirst levels as well as the ability to gather and cook food. Future updates will include more animals, as well as monsters and additional biomes. There are also other exciting things in the pipeline, such as dungeons, ruins, temples, vehicles and a clothing system. Buying the game during its early access phase entitles you to receive all future updates without extra cost, which is always nice.

Obviously the biggest question is whether Rising World is worth buying at this stage. It is still in early access and missing many planned features, but for players who just want to explore and build things I would say it is definitely worth the investment. It is already easy to lose hours just messing around with all the building and crafting options in the game and from the looks of it things are only going to get better.

This preview is based on version 0.5.3.5 Alpha of the game.