Will Wright, the creator of popular games including The Sims, SimCity, and Spore, has announced a new project he’s working on in collaboration with game development studio, Gallium Artists, called Proxi. Unlike the aforementioned titles like SimCity which were primarily focused on the PC platform, Proxi is being developed as a mobile game using the Unity engine, but like Will Wright’s previous PC titles, Proxi will take the form of a simulation game revolving around certain aspects of human life and existence.
According to Will Wright, Proxi is a game about self-discovery, designed to “uncover the hidden you” and bring it into the game world to allow players to interact with it, learn from it while it learns about you. These so-called memories seem to be contained in their own, separate 3D bubbles featuring colorful scenes and environments, and these bubbles will be used as building blocks for creating the game world in Proxi, with players having to choose what type of topics (memories) they want to add into their worlds which, in turn, will gradually develop from a blank slate into a more expansive universe. At this point it’s rather unclear how these memories will interact with one another or the player, or what players actually have to do within the game world in order to succeed, but if Proxi will be anything like Will Wright’s usual software simulations then it will likely be more focused on the journey itself rather than an end goal. It’s also unclear whether Proxi will offer a more personalized, unique experience from the get-go with these so-called memories potentially being generated from data collected by smartphones – such as location and photos – or if these memories will be generic and become more personal once players provide additional information through gameplay, but the latter example is much more likely.
Proxi’s release date is unknown, however, Will Wright and game studio Gallium Artists, in collaboration with Unity Connect, have prepared a contest that allows artists to submit three personal memories represented as three different environment scenes created with the Unity engine. The contest offers two grand prizes which include a private dinner with Will Wright and the contest judges, as well as an interview with Will Wright and the team at Gallium Artists, which could translate into a job consisting in creating environments for the upcoming title. There will also be six honorable mentions with prizes including software, T-shirts, and more, and the contest will last until May 14, 2018.