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   Introversion rocks! I have come to believe that they're the reason why the saying "keep it simple" was invented. They always seem to keep it simple in their games, and in turn, their games always end up being superb strokes of genius: Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, bar none. And hopefully their fourth game will be equally original and enjoyable. However, we are already being warned that it may take a couple of years until they get it done. As revealed last month, Introversion's new project is called Subversion, and over the last couple of weeks, the indie developer began sharing some info on its forums.

   So, without further ado, behold the first non-screenshots from Subversion. Don't let them fool you, though. As lead designer Chris Delay explains in this great history of Introversion's past games, the first batch of screens (dated January 9, 2007 in our gallery) are actually samples of his creative experiments from more than four years ago! He first began fiddling with ideas for a project codenamed Subversion in July 2002, and for a few months, he was absolutely convinced this would be Introversion's big hit second game. But since then, the second (Darwinia) and third (DEFCON) games have already been launched, so Subversion will be their fourth... if no other quickly-doable bright idea comes up in the meantime. Chris goes on to explain:
"This game has been bubbling away in the backs of our minds for years, and has been an ongoing late night topic for us ever since we pushed it aside in 2003. In that time it has changed and grown and solidified and matured into something quite beautiful, and we're finally in a position to be able to do it justice. It's going to take us a couple of years, but as a company we're getting bored of keeping everything secret for so long, and the decision has been made to open the process up to the world. Our next game will be developed in the full glare of the general gaming public, and we hope you enjoy the process as much as we do."    And in full public glare they're doing it, alright! Just as 2007 begun, Chris posted another update on Subversion, after the first week of actual game development. He provides four new screenshots (see the batch from January 10), and this time they're brand new, showing how their "procedural City Generator" currently works. What's that for? Well we still have no precise idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not gonna be just another city builder.
"These screenshots represent the first weeks work in writing a procedural City Generator. Just a few incredibly simple rules govern the growth of roads in these prototypes. By making small changes to those rules, you can vastly change the result. Encouraging roads to run North-South or East-West results in Manhattan style street grids, whereas encouraging roads to circle population centres results in lovely radial street patterns. These are obviously very early prototype shots but I wanted to show the incredible power (and beauty) of procedurally generated content, even at this early stage."    And to top it all off, they even give us a first trailer with the procedural thingie in action. Short and certainly sweet, in geek kind of way. (Instants later, after scrolling-up...) Whoa, nuf' said! We wish them speedy development and a productive new year.