Cell: Emergence set for release on February 9th

Posted February 1, 2012 by Joannes Truyens in News, Videos.

Cell: Emergence, a game penned by Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti, is set to be released for PC and Xbox 360 on February 9th.

Does anyone remember Innerspace? That movie where Dennis Quaid is miniaturised and travels into Martin Short’s body in a submarine pod? I love that movie. If you do too, perhaps Cell: Emergence is something for you. The game is the first independent project from Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti, and it’s set to be released on February 9th.

Announced in August of last year, Cell: Emergence puts you in the size 0.000001 boots of a nanobot pilot inside the body of a sick girl to fight off diseases. “The fast, deep simulation of tissues, antibodies, germs, nanomachinery, and other elements is achieved with a ‘dynamic voxel’ gameworld, within which every visual detail has meaning, reacts to the player, and interacts with its neighbors,” says a press release from New Life Interactive.

It seems like a Minecraft-like procedural world where you go through “17 punishing levels that require players to decipher a level’s ‘cellular automata’ simulation and then battle living processes with speed and dexterity.” Except the world is the inside of a sick child.

The game will be released on Xbox LIVE Indie Games and various digital delivery platforms for PC, including GamersGate and Desura. For those who wish to try before they buy, a free demo will be made available two days earlier, on February 7th.

On Xbox 360, Cell: Emergence will set you back 400 MS Points (use them before you lose them) and offers a world of almost half a million cells. PC gamers will have access to a ‘Cell HD’ version, which doubles the amount of cells to a million and provides “higher fidelity sound and more frenetic gameplay tuned exclusively to the mouse/trackball/touchpad.” That will set you back $8.95.

Below is a tutorial and developer diary, which explains more of the game and how it works.

According to the press release, this is only “the first glimpse at a near-future fictional world where war is fought in code and chemistry and the inner workings of Nature”. So this may not be the only instance of the Cell: Emergence universe coming from New Life Interactive, a company that apparently specialises in “massively reactive gameplay”.

We at BeefJack will definitely tell you what we think of Cell: Emergence when it releases!

Tagged as Cell: emergence, Deus Ex, Indie Game, New Life Interactive, Sheldon Pacotti