This year’s Spike video game awards show was a bit of a bust when it came to game announcements (actually, it was an all-around bust). Buried amongst the Telltale games and the Cranky Kong gameplay at the rebranded VGX, however, was No Man’s Sky.
No Man’s Sky will be an exploration-based game where players can explore entire procedurally-generated worlds, then blast off into space to explore other planets and systems. The game’s incredible ambition and slick art was emphasized by the sincere excitement of the developer announcing the game for Hello Games.
With that hype coming out of the VGX, Hello Games set about the task of actually finishing No Man’s Sky, only to hit a major roadblock this week.
According to a tweet from the No Man’s Sky Twitter account, the company’s studio was met with a Christmas Eve surprise – and not a good one:
Uh oh! Our office is flooding. SAVE THE PCs!
— No Man's Sky (@NoMansSky) December 24, 2013
The entire Hello Games office in Guildford, UK has apparently been destroyed in a flash flood. Subsequent posts on both the Hello Games and No Man’s Sky Twitter accounts have revealed that nearly everything in the offices has been lost.
Though the situation is obviously a disaster, Hello Games demonstrated its good sense of humor, joking about floating laptops and Joe Danger cardboard cutouts:
Oh god. Water moves really quick. Hello Games has been totally flooded. Everything in the office has pretty much been lost 🙁
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 24, 2013
A lifesize cardboard cut out of Joe Danger went floating past face down. Poor Joe. He's taking this the worst.
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 24, 2013
A lifesize cardboard cut out of Joe Danger went floating past face down. Poor Joe. He's taking this the worst.
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 24, 2013
A river broke its bank nearby yesterday, and A LOT of water flooded in really quickly. A biblical amount. It was coming in the windows!
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 25, 2013
We've lost most things – PCs, monitors, furniture, a door, a wall. You'd think the massive water cooled mega PC would be ok? It was not 🙁
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 25, 2013
Lots of personal stuff lost (my console collection! my super rare neo geo pocket!) – that line between home and office is a little blurry
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 25, 2013
If one more person tweets 'every flood procedural' I'm gonna… lol each time. Gotta laugh init 🙂
— No Man's Sky (@NoMansSky) December 25, 2013
Luckily for No Man’s Sky fans it doesn’t appear that the flood has ended the project or the studio. Hello Games is keeping its chin up and promising to carry on:
We're taking stock today, but already I know we'll come back stronger 🙂 – all we'll need is a place to work and a machine to work on 🙂
— Hello Games (@hellogames) December 25, 2013