If you’ve ever wanted to become a cow or learn phrenology in a video game, you’re going to like this post: Project Gorgon now has a free demo. The outrageously detailed sandbox has been in early access since March, but in a world of free-to-play MMOs, its relatively hefty pricetag may have served as a deterrent to would-be virtual pig linguists and sushi chefs.
“Project: Gorgon is pretty unusual, and you can’t really tell if it’s going to be your thing until you try it,” Eric Heimburg, the man who implemented flower arrangement and iocaine resistance skills in an MMO, deadpans.
“I wanted to make sure the demo encompassed more than just the tutorial area, to really give demo users a feel for how the game plays. So the demo lets players explore Anagoge (the newbie island), Serbule, and Serbule Hills, as well as most of the dungeons in those areas. Demo characters can unlock new skills as usual, and they can raise any of their skills up to level 15. This gives demo’ers a broad sampling of the game’s content to explore. Once they buy the actual game, demo characters automatically become ‘real’ characters without any restrictions, so it’s quick and painless to transition from the demo to the regular game. We also worked hard to prevent “demo abuse”. Since players could theoretically create as many demo characters as they want (limited only by the number of Steam accounts they want to create), there are a lot of potential abuse scenarios, such as harassment, market-manipulation, muling, even power-leveling. (Power-leveling? Really?! Yes… at least, in limited forms. Imagine someone using a bunch of demo characters to play music for their main character’s garden — that’s technically power-leveling, since music makes plants grow faster!)”
That potential for abuse means there’s a whole list of stuff demo accounts can’t do – like join guilds, trade, tip money, and so forth. Sorry, cow people: You can’t milk other player cows either.
Heimburg caps off the post with a detailed look at the next update to the game, including UI improvements and crafting quality-of-life additions. “Over the next few months we’ll be taking a look at the higher-level areas: Kur, Ilmari, Rahu, and Gazluk,” he says.
You can grab the demo yourself on Steam – just click the “download demo” button.
