April 17, 2022: The Superman game demo built in Unreal Engine 5 is now playable.
Last week, a web developer made their own Superman game out of the Unreal 5 demo used for The Matrix Awakens, and announced they were looking to expand it into a proper superhero game. Now, another developer has properly added Superman to this experience – and it’s playable.
The Matrix Awakens was an impressive VR game demo built in Unreal Engine 5. The core of this demo is the detailed cityscape, and now Unreal 5 is freely available, Epic has made this ‘City Sample‘ available to budding developers to play about with. Developer Volod from Amber Studio – which works with Epic Games – used this demo as the hosting foundation for their own Superman-like game.
Volod says that they “cooked my own city grid in Houdini, using Epic’s project files and VEX scripting” and has apparently been “making city-building tools for years on film/commercial VFX work” so they know what they’re doing.
Then Volod plopped a generic character in and gave them Superman-like powers – and now says that they will attempt to turn it into a full game.
The #UE5 CitySample told me that it wants to turn into a #Superman game when it grows up…#IndieGameDev #gamedev #games pic.twitter.com/7BwAOt3KVF
— 𝕧𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕕▿ (@volodXYZ) April 6, 2022
A week later, Toybox Games Studios founder Tyson Butler-Boschma went one step further and actually added a proper Superman-like character too – albeit without the fresh, new city of Volod’s attempt. Tyson’s demo is actually playable right now and can be downloaded from their Itch.io page. Be warned, though – the developer warns that the demo is an “incredibly heavy game and lower-end PCs will struggle”.
#Superman in #UE5’s CitySample…
I must say, the results are quite spectacular! #IndieGameDev #gamedev #games pic.twitter.com/f8pAE9LTfq— Tyson Butler-Boschma (@TJATOMICA) April 16, 2022
The original Unreal engine 5 demo was partly created by ex-developers of Factor 5, the studio behind Star Wars: Rogue Squadron… and a cancelled Superman game, according to developer Salvatrix – who was lead designer on the cancelled game. None of the Unreal team worked directly on that, however, but its city creation expertise was “the foundation and engine” of Superman – just like with Volod’s and
Tyson Butler-Boschma’s games.
So not directly, but yes!
None of this team were on the Blue Steel team, BUT – this Epic demo crew has the core of Factor 5. Blue Steel was built on the foundation and engine these folks built.
Our cityscapes would not have been possible without their amazing expertise.
— Salvatrix (@DevSalvatrix) April 7, 2022
Hopefully, Superman will get a proper game soon, maybe even from the Gotham Knights studio – it’s certainly long overdue. Thanks to Fortnite, the Man of Steel’s no stranger to Unreal Engine 5, anyway.
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