Welcome back to another roundup of weirdo little MMOs and online games you’ve never heard of but probably should hear of! That’s why we’re here!
Let’s dig in first with a peek at an MMO we covered a long time ago but haven’t checked up on in a long time: Hades’ Star. When we last looked into the sci-fi MMO, it was a mobile game. Not anymore! The game officially launched on Steam this week, bringing its “unique space strategy game where thousands of players participate in one shared galaxy” to desktops – for free. It’s basically Master of Orion the MMO (with way better graphics!) and we are here for it. Notably, it’s also cross-platform, so if you’ve already got an Android empire, you can access it from Steam too
“Hades’ Star is a space strategy game where thousands of players participate in one shared galaxy. You create and grow a space empire over time, in a persistent galaxy that constantly evolves. There are various stars to explore that offer different gameplay types that range from singleplayer, PvE to PvP. Yellow stars are the perfect place to build your thriving empire and long-term economy. Red stars explode within 15 minutes, but offer an opportunity for resource gathering and player co-op. White stars last for 5 days and features up to 40 players from two corporations. During this 5 day period, you can plan future moves, communicate them to other corporation members, and see potential outcomes of future combat. Lastly, blue stars last for 5 minutes and are PvP events. Players can only send one battleship to these stars and the top 5 participating players combat each other using their ship’s modules and other NPC ships to destroy other player ships and be the last one alive.”
Up next is Cabal Mobile. You remember Cabal Online and Cabal 2, right? Tremendously popular South Korean MMOs, not quite so popular here? Welp, ESTgames announced a mobile version that has all the same basic features, from PvE raiding to PvP warring. According to MMO Culture, Korean beta will begin in March.
Redstone looked super familiar to me when MOP reader Panagiotis (cheers!) sent it our way, but we don’t seem to have covered it before. It’s a 2004 MMO from L&K Logic Korea that was ported here 12 years ago but was kicked around between publishers and never quite made it big. It hopped onto Steam back in 2015 to mixed reviews (it looks like you either love the isometric view or you hate it) and rolled out a big update in November.
Finally, if you’re not super sick of mobile MMORPGs, take a quick peek at Bitgate’s in-development Curse of Aros. It’s been in early access open beta since late last year and boasts pixel graphics, exploration, crafting, harvesting, and apparently even PvP. It also looks as if the game had a run at an Indiegogo last year too. (via Reddit)
Spot an MMO we’ve never covered? Send it our way!
