Ultima Forever Previewed at GDC 2013

Here’s a look at some Ultima Forever gameplay, in a demo put on by producer Carrie Gouskos and lead designer Kate Flack at GDC 2013 this week:

There are a few takeaways from this demo, the most obvious is that it’s clear that the game’s interface has been heavily overhauled since the alpha test; we haven’t had glimpses of the most current iteration of the game’s interface in any of the screenshots released since then (that I can recall). The “friends list” on the right (which can be hidden) speaks to the social interaction the game hopes to foster. Gameplay has been polished some, the graphics tweaked in some respects…the game seems to be coming along very well.

But the biggest (and perhaps most important) takeaway from the video is that it was published — and the demo conducted for — Android Central. Granted, you can see that Carrie Gouskos is playing the game on an iPad, but I’m thinking there’s still some significance to the Android element here; perhaps the Android release will follow hot on the heels of — if not occur at the same time as — the iPad release.