I am Michel Thomazeau - aka NeoM, and we are Cubical Drift, a small team based in Cannes, south of France.
The full time Cubical Drift Team: Guyk, NeoM, Mick, Altalus, Reymantha, Coding Marmot
After 10 years in the professional programming world for different companies, Fabien (aka CodingMarmort), Guillaume (Guyk), I got an idea: to make a game that will merge together RPG and “voxel” based games. In mid-2012, after months of iteration, Planets³ was born!
It took us a year to bring our “ideas” to a real and concrete project. In October 2013, the three of us founded Cubical Drift.
As we are gamers ourselves, it is like fulfilling a dream (Yes! We are making our own video game!). But to make Planets³, we needed help from artists, so we started to look for them in 2012. Today, he artistic team is composed of six people (learn more about the team here). By the end of 2013, Alexandre (aka Reymantha), the lead artist, transformed our ideas into beautiful concept art. These concepts allowed us to communicate and talk about our project, as it is always easier to explain something with visuals.
Planets³ - Concept Art
In April 2014, we successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign that allowed us to install ourselves in our premise at Cannes and really start the production of the game.
Later on that August, we released the first intermediate version of the game: the construction prototype (available for the people who preorder the game either on Kickstarter or on our own website).
Planets³ Construction Prototype "in game" screenshot
In September, we faced some problems with the engine we used, so we decided to change to another one. After three weeks of investigation, Unreal Engine 4 did appear as the best solution for us. The multi-platform possibilities (PC, Mac, Linux, and consoles), the amazing rendering with latest technical specifications, and all the tools that will make the game easier to develop (the Editor with Blueprints and all “data” access and configuration) allowed us to make the final decision.
So in October, we started the migration of Planets³ to UE4.
Today, we’re almost finished with the transition, and we’re now dedicated to implementing new gameplay features, such as combat and craft.
Here is the latest news update from last year, where we show some of the last vegetation creations:
Our plans for this year include the alpha, the beta, and the full release of the game.
Website: www.planets-cube.com