So here’s a new one for us: It’s a game called Project Oasis World, and that name seems apt because while it’s technically an MMO, it’s more a roleplaying world than a combat grinder, and it’s currently running a small Kickstarter. In fact, it kinda looks like GTAO, down to the font styling, with most of the ramming-pedestrians-with-cars stripped out and replaced with dancing, chilling at bars, fishing, growing weed, monitoring your bladder bar, and leveling up your corn-husking skills. I started that sentence teasing, but as I’m finishing it out, it kinda sounds fun.
“Project Oasis World is a new MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) that aims to create a living, breathing online world. Our unique player run economies are what make Project Oasis stand out in the MMORPG world. Imagine hundreds of players interacting with each other in a free open world sandbox environment. You choose who you are, what you wear, how you get around, how you earn your living, how you spend your free time. Your only goal: to live.”
The Kickstarter seeks $25,000 to complete the core game demo, with animals, vehicles, and rental housing going up the stretch goal ladder. The studio is aiming for PC early access within a year, is “laying the initial groundwork to be VR accessible in the future,” and is planning multiple new character roles post-Kickstarter, including “a law enforcer job, criminal job, agricultural role, and a manufacturing role.”
Here’s one thing that seems particularly cool: Even your character’s gender is on a slider. “Instead of making a selection between Male or Female, the Sex Slider allows you to slide on a spectrum between Masculine, Neutral, and Feminine.”
So how viable is all this? It’s a fair question – I’ve never heard of these devs; they seem to be coming from the hardcore modding corner of the indie world, which may explain the low budget/crowdfund ask. Here’s what the developers say on Kickstarter:
“Our team has had a few years of experience with working on MMO’s due to our mod support on AAA titles and a few other smaller titles. We have ran all of our own servers hosting hundreds of simultaneous players and feel comfortable working with large databases. This translate a lot easier on a stand alone that we are creating as we are not restricted by a games proprietary code/database structures. We are not over promising and over extending. We know what we can do with our team size. We have created the appropriate documentation and planned out our success. We have also already ran recent internal successful tests that made us feel comfortable enough to do this.”
