From the developers of the extremely vast and ambitious space exploration sim “No Man’s Sky” featuring 18 quintillion planets that require billions of years to explore, comes a new title “Light No Fire”, which uses the same technology on an inverse concept, i.e., instead of procedurally generating an entire universe, this game will generate just one fantasy planet. Here is all we know about Light No Fire’s Release Date, gameplay and everything else.
The available information on the game is quite limited, the game has only recently been announced by Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray at the 2023 Game Awards who said that the game has been in development for five years. “Light No Fire” has its website and Steam page, both of which have the same five small paragraphs that describe what the game is about. The official description is:
“Light No Fire is a game about adventure, building, survival, and exploration together. Set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth, it brings the depth of a role-playing game to the freedom of a survival sandbox.”
Murray has described Light No Fire as “the first real open world” which alludes to its sheer scale. Most open-world games are open-world in concept, such that the player can directly go to locations and, without any loading screens, engage in quests laid out in these locations on a map which is usually the size of a real-life city, however, in Light No Fire it seems that all of the above will be executed over a massive planet similar in size and scale to our own Earth.
What We Know Light No Fire
To summarize what Light No Fire is trying to achieve, it is attempting to merge features of, MMO (massively multiplayer online) with thousands of players on one planet, RPG (Role-playing game) with its fantasy spin on Earth that is home to Dragons and avatars belonging to different species, and Survival Sandbox games with mechanics such as mining, crafting, building and foraging.
The Steam page and website describe Light No Fire as a Multiplayer, Procedural, Fantasy, and Unexplored Earth. This means that thousands of players from across the world will play together on one Earth, perhaps each server with another iteration of Earth, and will then be free to form communities, build bases, and collect resources, or go solo and discover different mountains, plains, and valleys that the game has to offer, possibly fighting or trading with other players encountered along the way.
Procedural and unexplored without a doubt mean that Hello Games will once again use procedural generation, i.e., algorithms and random numbers to generate the large expanses, mountains, valleys, flora, and fauna on the fantasy Earth, similar to how they were able to create the almost limitless universe in No Man’s Sky. Fantasy Earth means that creatures, avatars, and locations in the game will take inspiration from classical fantasy, i.e., players will be able to create their avatars from different races resembling rabbits, foxes, wolves, and humans, as well as be able to explore the world atop dragons or large birds.
Trailer Breakdown and Speculation
The trailer is short and undoubtedly stunning, and though it attempts to stir buzz without revealing too much about the game before its release date. There is still some information that can be garnered about what to expect from the game. Hello Games has confirmed that all the trailer footage has been collected in-game, which makes the footage quite impressive since the game has distances and dimensions that we as players are not used to, the mountains are not small as in most games but appear as large as real life mountains, allowing players to perhaps build camps at different heights as they attempt to reach the summit.
The trailer shows that not only can a player swim underwater, which is considered a major feature in games but can also explore and interact with dense underwater areas teeming with life, riches, and perhaps communities of players or NPCs who prefer the world below sea level.
The game seems to have several means of flight, including large birds, dragons, and kites. Sailing appears to be another means of transport in the game and the Steam page also discusses setting sail across vast oceans and rivers. Other than walking and running, horseback riding has been showcased in the trailer as a means of quickly traversing land.
Building structures and bases also seems to be a big part of the game as can be seen in the trailer where characters are chopping trees, carrying wood, and building structures using magic. There is however lots left to be answered such as whether an area can be completely deforested for the entire player base forever? will farming be a thing? do players have to build structures themselves or are there NPCs or creatures that can be deployed to expedite the process? What about the in-game economy, will goods be traded directly or will there be a currency?
There is not a lot of combat showcased in the trailer except for this one shot where the character is fighting off giant crabs whilst wielding a flaming sword. There is also a shot of a different character walking towards a large humanoid monolith which indicates the possibility of boss fights in the game.
In a final scene in the trailer, where the party enters what looks like a temple or a throne room with a large ogre and a group of rabbits, the setting loosely alludes to the possibility of having a main story or quests handed to players by kings of different regions of the planet. This might be a way of incentivizing the player to explore the world rather than focusing on building and fortifying a base in a singular region.
Procedural Generation, No Man’s Sky, a Repeat?
No Man’s Sky was announced by Hello Games in 2013 and marketed as a next-generation game that would simulate the vastness and variety of our actual universe, promising millions of different planets and by extension a potentially limitless playtime. The game was released in 2016 and delivered far less than fan’s expectations. Although after release several updates have been added to improve the game such as new planets, more realistic weather, tornadoes, and meteor showers, the game still has its main underlying issue, i.e., repetitiveness. No Man’s Sky manages to give a limitless number of planets thanks to procedural generation which uses algorithms that generate planets and their assets thanks to random number generations; the system does seem to work rather well as the player explores some planets in the beginning, but soon the repetitiveness starts to show as they explore more planets. Despite the concept of procedural generation being exciting and revolutionary, when applied to a scope of literally the entire universe, it understandably falls short as there are only so many possible combinations of the available variables that can be enacted before starting to feel repetitive.
So now that the Steam page has called the world in Light No Fire a “Procedural Earth” which confirms the use of procedural generation in this game, one can’t help but wonder if this game will undergo a similar launch as No Man’s Sky. Several arguments suggest that Light No Fire will be able to achieve that fine balance between quality and quantity, the first of them being that Hello Games has more experience with this technology and will undoubtedly be more prepared to implement it, another argument that can be made in favor of the game is that the scope is now more confined which will enable Procedural generation to shine this time as the chances of repetition are less on planet-scale and adding in more variables for the algorithms to play within the environment will certainly mitigate the chance of repetitiveness on the planet. Although reducing scope from universe to planet does make the task look easier, the truth is that modeling the entire planet in individual assets is just impossible to even keep track of, let alone actually make these unique assets, procedural generation seems to be the only feasible way of making the entire planet, however, even though the algorithms will generate the planet, ensuring the planet lives up to the level of detail that was alluded to in the trailer will still be a challenge, i.e., improving, tweaking, guiding the technology to deliver a world as diverse as our own is still a complex problem. For now, good things can be expected from Hello Games as they did manage to turn around No Man’s Sky.
Light No Fire Release Date
There is no information on the release date for Light No Fire, there is only speculation all over the internet, but learning from No Man’s Sky which was announced in 2013 and released in 2016, Light No Fire is speculated to have a release date of 2026. Because the game has already been under development for 5 years, the trailer was all in-game footage, and marketing for it has started, it may come out a lot sooner, perhaps in mid to late 2024. It is important however to realize that the game should be released when development is complete rather than giving in to the hype and releasing it early only to disappoint and lose a lot of fans, looking at comments on YouTube and Steam, fans seem to be telling the studio to take their time with this game.
Light No Fire Platforms
Since the game has a Steam page, a PC release of Light No Fire is certain; however, it will remain to be confirmed if it will be released on XBOX and PlayStation. No Man’s Sky was released on PC, XBOX, and PlayStation, so it is almost certain that Light no Fire will follow suit.
Why Advertise So Soon?
Despite having announced Light No Fire at the 2023 game awards and also mentioning that the game has been in development for 5 years, Sean Murray has yet to comment on when can people expect to get their hands on Light No Fire, or at least a Beta testing version; however, that has not stopped Hello Games from advertising the game on major platforms as people are looking at adds for the game on Instagram, Facebook, X, Youtube, and Reddit. All of this activity begs the question, why create hype and buzz when the game is not complete? Have they not learned that creating hype can cause a game to buckle under the expectations great marketing creates, have they forgotten what happened to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man’s Sky for that matter? Twitter user Legacy Zero voices this concern, asking why to advertise if the game is not ready and does not have a release date.
There are a few possible reasons behind this as Ginger Prime on YouTube explains in detail. One obvious reason could simply be to ensure a healthy player base as soon as the game is released, many people wishlist it on Steam and buy it as soon as Hello Games releases it. Another reason could be to build traction and positive metrics online such as the number of people who wishlist it on Steam, as they can then take these metrics to potential investors and negotiate a better deal or for positive reinforcement of investors already on board. Another, though less likely reason could be that advertisement rates were low in January and they thought it couldn’t hurt advertising and developing some hype for the game.
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