As we’ve been steadfastly reporting, Project Ghost, the developing MMORPG from Greg Street’s studio Fantastic Pixel Castle, is a game of two halves: blue zones, which are mostly randomly generated, smaller scale adventure maps for solo or small group play; and red zones, which are specifically designed for larger MMO-sized activities. It’s the former type of zone that’s at the heart of FPC’s latest dev roundtable as members of the studio talk about blue zone testing and next steps forward.
The devs talk about how blue zones link to wider character progression even though they’re shorter session-based bites that right now can run as long as 45 minutes; most of that is linked to characters still earning levels and keeping specific items that they earn from blue zones, while other items will be “shard bound” – i.e., specific to that blue zone. Once objectives are done in that blue zone, then players will be encouraged to move forward to a new one.
However, there will also be a way for players to “save” a blue zone to visit again later; that’s described as a sort of version of player housing that “preserves a snapshot” of “conquered land.” There will obviously be a limit, though, mostly for storage reasons.
As for what’s been in blue zones in terms of content, Ghost MMO has been focusing on some stealth-style mechanics, introducing more nuanced monster AI and new mechanics for players to sneak attack enemies, as well as testing of a horde mode that put players into a small blue zone to survive waves of foes. The overall goal is to make sure that blue zones have specific objectives and don’t feel like instanced dungeons where the gameplay loop is to rock up and slaughter everything. Other possible blue zone gameplay being discussed involves sneaking past foes or befriending one group to encourage it to attack another.
Discussion on blue zone map generation came up, with the devs admitting that some of the more interesting terrain features aren’t available yet but will be worked on, requiring more hand-crafted assets. This does kind of require a lot more iteration by the sound of it, but there’s also consideration to making sure devs aren’t waiting on “an uber tool.”
The devs also point out that they received some new tech that allows for the creation of blue zones of various difficulties; they’re currently in easy, medium, or hard right now, but the studio does believe that different challenge tiers will make blue zones less tedious. There’s also some thought towards making sure Ghost balances between unique and new challenges without ramping up the stakes too high.
We’re once again bounding between whiteboard territory and tested and produced gameplay territory in this video, but it’s still perhaps worth some time to absorb directly.
