Hands-on | Love

Format: PC | Genre: MMO | Developer: Eskil Steenberg | ETA: TBC

By Fraser McMillan

Within my first hour or so of playing Love, our community had already been infiltrated by a griefer, seen no shortage of in-fighting and – incredibly – borne witness to the birth of capitalism.

That any of this is even possible within the constraints of a digital world means his creation is a resounding success, but Eskil Steenberg’s game achieves astounding things from the word go. The PC is still the home of systems-based videogaming, Civilisation IV being the modern standard-bearer, and Love can feel like these experiences in some ways.

But it’s arguably more clever. A system develops, but it’s organic, shaped both unwittingly and knowingly by players in equal measure. In Civ, the player has a fairly strong degree of control, whereas in Love, each player is born equal and stays that way, an inhabitant rather than overlord with the ability to wield powers and steer the world as potently as everyone else. Such democratic distribution of power in an organically developing environment is new. Players have to assign their own roles – after first establishing a settlement, some will hunt for tokens, some will tunnel, some will create fortresses, some will keep watch, some will hook up power lines, some will scout new land, some will simply look for a nice place to plant their tree. It’s a bit like, well, Lemmings. At one point, my comrades even began leaping from a cliff one by one in a bid to reach a landmass across the water. Needless to say, the attempt was doomed to failure.

There are so many areas in which Love and other titles intersect it’s almost worth drawing a line under identifying them. NME-style “X imitating X covering X on Speed” comparisons simply don’t do it justice because it carves its own path so radically. I should note, at this point, that the version available is still in alpha. It costs three euros for a month’s play time, but Steenberg issues a warning that it’s unfinished and major bugs are highly likely. The lack of sound is the most obvious indication that this is no complete product, but it’s surprisingly solid for such an early build, especially considering the nature of development – one man creating and testing an MMO from scratch.

//What’s to love?
But what really is it? We’ve seen those awe-inspiring screenshots a thousand times, and they don’t really explain anything. Steenberg’s video walkthrough wasn’t particularly helpful, he himself reporting from the eye of the development storm and focusing only on a couple of his project’s more complex features. At its most basic level, Love is a first-person adventure. There’s shooting of some kind, but it’s far from the thrust of the experience. Movement itself is rapid and jumps reach a surprising height, meaning an emphasis is placed on exploration and use of tools. Tokens are scattered around the world, and each can be placed near a settlement (defined by the area surrounding a monolith, the founding token) to dispense tools to players. At this stage, each user has four slots for these, one of which is occupied by a rifle from the off; hey, a man needs to defend himself.

Most tools can only be used in and around the settlement, and range from the mundane – grass and pavement textures – to the practical – smooth edit for shaping the landscape and various bits of geometry – to the advanced – radio, display, binoculars – and everything in between. Checkpoints are strewn across the planet, and by clicking on one, the player places a marker in their inventory and can return to the location at any time. Because of the random territory generation it’s possible to become stranded or stuck, so this is a vital ability.

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