Novaquark released a new video for their upcoming game Dual Universe, a shared MMORPG sandbox game. The procedurally generated game features planet creation, space travel and voxel terraforming.

The new gameplay video features 10 whole minutes of gameplay, demonstrating a crude version of the game’s creation toolset to build and erect structures, as well as dig and burrow deep underground to create mining tunnels, pathways and more. It’s a little bit like Minecraft meets Star Citizen meets No Man’s Sky. You can check out the video below.

The video showcases Dual Universe’s seamless transition from planets to space without loading screens. We get to see a placeholder cockpit system which is very detailed – not quite as much as Star Citizen but that’s what they seem to be aiming for.

One of the space stations that players will be able to explore was also featured in the video, and it was explained that the space station was procedurally created and it was 8km long. Players can basically edit and modify just about any and everything in the game. This includes editing and modifying the space ship you fly, similar to Empyrion: Galactic Survival.

In the video we see a small tour of the space station after flying from the planet’s surface up into space. We get to see just how large everything is and get a sense of the scale of the properties.

We also learn that everything can be built and modified to the player’s liking, this ranges from inhabitable cities to the space stations that overlook them. Heck, you could technically surround your planet with mag cannons to keep intruders from invading your peaceful planet. Heck, you could recreate the Fall of Reach and have massive battles taking place out in space over a planet’s horizon. How awesome would that be?

The game seems to contain the same kind of promising elements we saw in projects like StarForge or titles like Keen Software House’s Space Engineers, just on a larger scale… a much larger scale.

Now for everyone prepped to say “If these guys can do it, why is it taking Cloud Imperium Games, Keen Software House and others so long to complete their games?” well, first of all Dual Universe is not complete. It’s still a ways off from release and right now everything we’ve seen has just been pre-alpha footage centered around the procedural generation, a static seed, and the game’s rendering capabilities for planetary-sized LOD. Additionally, the game still doesn’t have fully fleshed out combat or finished voxel toolsets implemented for crafting, so it’s still a long ways off from being where the developers want it to be. That’s not to mention that we have no idea how well Dual Universe operates on a standard end-user’s machine or how well optimized it is.

As many of you know, Space Engineers is one of the most feature-rich emergent games out there but it still suffers greatly from a lack of proper performance optimization.

Right now, Dual Universe looks great and looks like it’s on track to being the sort of space MMO that a lot of people have been craving. Whether or not they can fully deliver is a whole different story, but hopefully they can pull through and make it happen.

You can keep track of the game’s development by hitting up the official website.