Project Awakened, The Little Big Planet Of First Person Shooters

Project Awakened is looking to be the Little Big Planet of First Person Shooter. The project was launched as a Kickstarter campaign on February 4 and they are hoping to raise $500,000 with 27 days left to go.

Little Big Planet also comes with a built-in editor that is so powerful that almost all of the game content was produced using the same tools that players use. This has led to a sequel and a new version of the concept that focuses on Karting. Ever since Little Big Planet, many gamers have been asking whether it’s possible to see something similar except designed specifically for First Person Shooters.

Phosphor Games Studio was formed by many video game industry veterans from Midway Games, which produced such gaming classics as Mortal Kombat. They had been working on a project entitled “Hero” that included many of the concepts that will be found in Project Awakened. But Midway games filed for bankruptcy in 2009, which meant that Hero got canned. They hope to resurrect these idea with Project Awakened.

The largest goal for Project Awakened is that it allows players to have access to a “create a player” editor:

“Project Awakened contains a modular powers and skill system that allows players to select from a huge number of abilities and combine them in unique ways. Unlike other games which use a class system or skill trees, Project Awakened leaves every choice and ability up the player. … Project Awakened has huge potential to foster a robust Mod community. If the Stretch Goal is achieved, Project Awakened will ship with the editor exposed, and the game itself will be built in such a modular fashion that it will be easy to modify any values on any abilities, weapons, maps, etc. to the player’s liking. Craft new weapons, new character outfits, and create entirely new maps and gameplay scenarios using the easy to use editor and our massive art library.”

The early build of Project Awakened is based upon Unreal Engine 3, but they apparently plan on shifting over to UE 4 which features graphics technology like Voxel Cone Tracing and many features that benefit the efficiency of game development.

Of course, such high end graphics will be limited to more recent PC video cards and the upcoming Xbox 720 and Playstation 4, which might be announced on February 20. Similar Global Illumination (GI) methods are available with CryEngine 3, which features Cascaded Light Propagation Volumes in Crysis 2 (albeit scaled down to be playable in today’s gaming hardware).

Would you invest into Project Awakened based upon their plans?