It’s been 12 years in the making, but the shape of The Face Of Mankind: Fall Of The Dominion will be decided on 6th June. Hugely ambitious, the futuristic sandbox MMO, started life in 2001 and a version was launched in 2006 under Creative Director Marko Dieckmann’s lead, but after some damaging and financially crippling DDoS attacks, the game struggled to continue. Now, thanks to a strong Kickstarter campaign that has smashed its $50,000 target, it’s going to be a reality again and this iteration looks the best to date.

“I can imagine that many have already made up their mind about the game” Dieckmann told us, reflecting on the long process it has taken to get to this point in the game’s development. “We have experienced a lot in the past and not every feature has worked out as well as we hoped. But we learned from our mistakes and can now look back to a multitude of experiences when it comes to building sandbox type MMOs with full player control”.

Dieckmann is pulling no punches when he talks about full control. "It has always been my original vision to create an online game in which you could become everything by using your own skills, regardless of character levels or classes. How you achieve that is totally up to you." Ten years ago, The Face Of Mankind was built around the concept of player interaction and freedom, owing its limitless potential to the imaginations and passions of the players. In Fall Of The Dominion, choice is central to the game design whilst every decision and course of action a player takes leaves a mark on the galaxy and impacts on other player’s in some way. The game features a persistent universe where everything you do leaves a footprint long after you log off. Players begin the game with nothing, both socially and mechanically, aspiring to one day earn everything. “This kind of hardcore gameplay is necessary to have a truly immersive world, which is what we're aiming to achieve” Dieckmann honestly reveals. “For a player to fully enjoy their success, it must be contrasted by the hardship of getting there and maintaining it. This may seem unusual in an era polluted by games that spoon feed content, but we think it is what will make an amazing experience”.

Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion is a game about a potential future, far removed from human civilization as we know it. Driven by memories of violence, overcrowding and a depletion of all natural resources, mankind has left Earth to seek out remote locations among the stars to begin anew. All across the galaxy colonies were built, connected through a series of gates referred to as the Vortex Network. From its seat of power in Manhattan, a single government known only as the Dominion controlled all of humanity. Now the Dominion has fallen and anarchy is soon to spread across the stars. The darkest parts of the galaxy will be full of crime and illegal underground dealings. New empires will rise and fall, blood will be spilt, and men will be broken.

Player-driven economies will define the prices and available items. Virtually every item in the game is crafted by players and then auctioned or sold to other players. The art of crafting is itself will be an immersive, interactive experience as players will have to search colonies with scanners to find minerals, mining them with special guns. These minerals then must be transported to a production terminal, where special schematics will define the resulting item. These schematics create customized items, each with their own unique attributes. The terminals will also allow users to apply mods and change the balance of it. The classless, political-less landscape is also player-driven with progress through the world defined purely by a player’s own interests rather than a mechanically defined role telling you what to do. It’s a fascinating idea – that a player simply selects the skill they want to progress and continues play whilst it progresses. No grinding, no following a map or a linear narrative.

Players must organise themselves, creating factions where the friendships and rivalries created will influence what events happen. Another interesting mechanic that will exist for the community is a system of arresting and imprisonment. In Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion, there are two capturable prison territories that will give the owning faction the ability to arrest through combat. The players will then have to serve out their bounty in the prison, with it being paid out to the owning faction (with a nice bonus for arresting!) as their time is served. Of course, this is a sandbox, so you can be broken out of jail by your allies too! Players are able to own apartments in the game and these apartments can be broken into by thieves. Thieves can then steal items from the owner and will have to carry them around for a while before they can be laundered. Items that are “hot,” cannot be sold at the markets, or stored in any location other than a player’s inventory. There will be numerous types of apartments, ranging from run-down "rat holes" to luxury penthouses, with varying levels of customization such as furniture and other upgrades, allowing you to utilize them for parties, tactical meetings, or just a nice comfortable place to relax and keep your belongings. If wronged, a player could always seek out revenge; each character can possibly be killed anywhere, for any reason, by anyone. When someone dies, the loot they were carrying is up for grabs, although in killing someone, however, there can be consequences, all of which are controlled by other players within the game universe. For instance, if you were to murder a notorious criminal leader, it is quite likely that his minions and allied factions (who are also other players) could retaliate against you.

It all goes towards creating a really interesting contrast between all our worlds and offers those players who wonder what it would truly be like to live in the future perhaps a taste of what and who they might become. “The primary drive of the game is that it isn’t so much about the characters as it is the people playing them” concludes Dieckmann. “The progression that a player makes in the game needs to be about choice and investment in the game rather than mindlessly killing a series of creatures in order to get to the next level. You can freely choose what paths to progress. You are free to be whatever you want and play the game however you want to play it”.

Though the Kickstarter goal has been met, backers still have 48 hours to get first dibs on the game and maybe hit some of the stretch goals. All we’re sure of is, if the The Face Of Mankind is up for shaping, we want to be one of the shapers.