Core, the new game/creation tool hybrid coming from Manticore Games, allows players to craft, share, and play within custom worlds designed around different experiences. Core is well situated within an already growing space populated by other games like Fortnite, Dreams, and Minecraft. However, as a free-to-play game on PC, Core does things differently by focusing more on the experience of exploring different player worlds, tying into a more extensive network that is essentially a multiverse of unique player-created landscapes.

Out now in open alpha on PC, newcomers will be able to join the online community that the game has already formed during its closed alpha period, and take many of the player-creations for a test run, or dive into the mechanics head-on to push the limits of the system themselves. But what sets Core apart from games like Fortnite and Dreams is the level of flexibility to explore and experiment with the various constructs. When players dive into the game, they can just stick with one player's level, such as a standard multiplayer deathmatch with other players set in custom created locales. However, if you want to switch things up without leaving the game, you can seamlessly hop over to different levels via an in-game portal, no matter how different they are.

Much like in games such as Dreams and LittleBigPlanet, you'll be able to work within a robust level and map editor to design a variety of different spaces and retool various aspects of the core gameplay. In addition to using other player creations as a base, letting you get a grasp of the systems and go from there, you can also make a world from scratch and mold it into any type of experience you see fit. On a mechanic-level, Core feels most accustomed to the mechanics of a shooter, like Fortnite, but players will be able to reshape the game into something else entirely. Instead of being locked into one type of experience until you exit the game, you can portal hop over into a drastically different game and setting--akin to switching over to a different channel.