EVE Online developer CCP Games has revealed more details about its upcoming “survival experience,” Project Awakening, which has a playtest on the way soon. It’s on the whole still very mysterious, with no in-game screenshots to indicate what it’s actually meant to look like, but we do at least know a little bit more about its setting and concept.

Project Awakening has been described as “a single-shard survival experience” which is “set in the dark expanse of space where civilization has decayed in the ruin of its own ambition. Players will explore a hostile and dangerous cosmos as they fight to survive against what remains and attempt to rebuild a broken world.” In itself, that sounds pretty neat, and the game’s universe is said to “evolve from the actions and efforts of its players.”

The next closed playtest, dubbed “Phase 3,” is set to begin on May 21, and will include an “online hackathon” which will “provide ambitious builders with an opportunity to unleash their creativity.” It adds: “We will provide you with the guides and tools to realize your ingenuity, experimenting and building new features and functionality.”

While in theory it sounds interesting, there are some big questions over the technology behind it. According to the latest information, Project Awakening is powered by the open source Carbon Development Platform, as well as Lattice’s MUD. It will create “a persistent world bound by digital physics, where composability and programmability will enable players to build and collaborate on top, outside of and within the emergent game environment – unlocking boundless creativity for third-party development via blockchain technology and cryptography.” There’s a lot to unpack there, but the word that sticks out loud and clear amongst the lot is “blockchain.”

The use of blockchain technology in games continues to be highly controversial for a number of reasons. For one, its enormous environmental impact is impossible to ignore, which makes some uneasy about engaging with it. Otherwise, with games that incorporate non-fungible tokens (NFTs), there are concerns directly related to those, such as what happens to the NFTs that people have paid for if the game shuts down. As such, blockchain gaming projects are often met with heavy backlash.

Right now, it’s still not remotely clear how this blockchain technology will be utilized in the game, but ever since the project’s initial announcement last year, the idea of it has been a source of confusion for EVE Online players. After all, back in 2022, CCP reassured the fanbase that “we have no plans to add blockchain technology into EVE Online’s global server Tranquility for the foreseeable future.”

With that said, this same statement did hint that the technology may eventually be used in the wider EVE franchise, as it added: “While we remain intrigued by the technology, for us, NFT stands for ‘Not for Tranquility.’ Overall, the EVE IP will continue to push the boundaries of digital economies and virtual worlds – and we will continue to explore that outside of TQ.”

Project Awakening doesn’t have a full release date at the time of writing, but players interested in trying it can register for the upcoming playtest now.