This genre has all kinds of surprises hiding around the corner. Take for example the game Soulforged, a truly distinct multiplayer RPG currently in early alpha that drops you into a basic yet brutal land where you have to scrounge together resources and learn to survive, primarily through context clues, logic, and a fair bit of forethought, as every action eats up a pool of points that slowly replenish over time.
This game comes from solo developer Arek Bisaga, who describes Soulforged as “a passion project that aims to create a compelling, persistent fantasy world, with meaningful choices and interactions, full of exploration, discovery and epic stories.” Players can chase several vocations from alchemist to fighter to culinarian, and there are opportunities for players to help each other out, particularly since the game starts out with your character effectively unarmed, afflicted with some mysterious illness, and also feeling sad, which is absolutely a debuff in this game.
I tried Soulforged for a few minutes, and while it is extremely basic and the game intentionally isn’t very guided (there’s one NPC at the very first location that gives you some basic tips and that’s about all), it also strikes some familiar survivalbox territory, forcing me to puzzle out recipes for tools and items via experimentation and try to consider my surroundings logically. The UI is a bit hard to work around but not insurmountable, and the game very much feels like a roguelike; basically, prepare to learn by failing a fair bit.
The action points mechanic would be the biggest black mark, as it seems a bit counterproductive to the usual MMO gamer’s habits and I found myself absolutely burning through my AP far too quickly despite my desire to keep playing. Mercifully, Soulforged isn’t going to sell any AP boosts according to its lone developer. In fact, the game touts that there will be no sales or monetization of any kind, though players can support the dev through Patreon for $1.50 a month if they so wish; supporters get no mechanical benefits beyond the ability to skip a login queue.
The game is completely free-to-play and can be fired up in pretty much any browser, so for those who are curious to give it a peek, it just costs a couple of seconds (and a link to a Google account) to fire the game up. Just be prepared to move deliberately.
