Here’s a look at PUBG creator’s survival game set in a wilderness generated by machine learning

PUBG creator Brendan Greene’s “ambitious” three-game project will soon get underway with the launch of Prologue: Go Wayback! in “Q2” this year. And in the run up to the survival game’s release, Greene’s studio PlayerUnknown Productions has shared a first trailer.

For some backstory, Greene unveiled his studio’s three-game plan last December, explaining that each project would build on the last, culminating in something called Project Artemis. That started with last year’s early access release of Preface: Undiscovered World – not one of Greene’s three planned games, but rather an “immersive tech demo” giving players the opportunity to explore an Earth-scale world generated by machine learning agents in real-time.

With that project now out in the wild, things are about to step up a notch with the release of Prologue: Go Wayback!. This builds on last year’s tech demo by introducing more traditional survival game elements into a wilderness generated by machine learning – enabling “millions” of maps and delivering what’s being described as a self-contained “single-player open-world emergent game within the survival genre”.

Go Wayback! promises a world where “emergent systems subtly influence gameplay”, with players needing to brave unpredictable weather and ever-changing landscapes as they attempt to reach the Weather Station and call for help to escape the wilderness. To that end, they’ll begin with an old, weathered map and essential tools, utilising resources, foraging for food, making repairs, and building shelters to improve their chances of survival.

“No one will tell you where to go or how to survive,” explains the blurb on Steam. “There are no hand-holding mechanics, no fixed paths, and no guarantees. It’s a world where preparation is key, and improvisation is often the difference between life and death.” That’s about all the information shared so far, but Prologue: Go Wayback!’s first trailer, which you can see above, gives an approximate idea of how it’ll all unfold as players explore vast expanses of autumnal forests, crystalline lakes, and looming mountains in snow, ice, and driving rain.

Go Wayback! is the first of three standalone games that’ll serve as “building blocks” for the studio’s ultimate project, Artemis – “a massive multiplayer sandbox experience that leverages the technological advancements tested” across earlier games. “After Prologue, two more games are planned for release in the coming years,” Greene explained previously, “each addressing critical technical challenges that will bring the studio closer to the final product.”