That headline sure makes this one sound like a big, snuggly time, doesn’t it? But developer Team Scionica believes there’s a market for an MMO experience like this, which is why the studio is putting together Valorbound, a PvPvE MMO that makes a lot of big sweeping claims to make itself stand out from the PvP gaming crowd.
For one thing, the game has a horizontal progression model that puts more weight on skills and equipment instead of levels and stats, promising that “from hour 1, to hour 4000 goblins are still going to pose a threat. More or less so, depending on what you’re wearing.” The game also lauds the opportunity for players to simply be adventurers and play any content they want with any others regardless of level, along with 338 different class combos and “hundreds of hours of play,” all without leveling stats to worry about.
The other major piece of Valorbound is its “hardcore” health management that eschews drinking away injuries with potions and instead tasks players with managing their health by dealing with wounds, bleeds, and broken bones. The page doesn’t elaborate fully on how these are mitigated, but does put emphasis on managing injuries and the environment, which reads like survival sandbox mechanics.
Information is still a little thin — the studio is only just setting up its Twitter presence and the gallery of in-game images are mostly different angles of a single village — but there is a website and a Discord for those who wish to follow along.
