A while back on Twitter I mentioned that my family is big into Alphabear, which is not an MMO, of course, but instead is one of SpryFox’s many multi-platform puzzlers. You’ve probably heard of a few of the others, like Road Not Taken and Triple Town, since they’re popular even on PC. So we are we talking about them here? Apparently, Spry Fox is building something more in our wheelhouse now: an actual MMO.
The news comes by way of a new job posting on the studio’s website. In fact, the company’s been hiring for a while for an unannounced game; previous job openings sought a dev with “a love of nonviolent worlds filled with both awe-inspiring outdoor spaces and intimate village life” a dev who “loves cozy games (i.e. cute, but broadly appealing; not necessarily kiddie).” But this weekend’s posting flat-out calls it a “non-violent MMO project” and includes a “sneak peek” pic of a cartoony vista with players helping each other scale a cliff. It seeks candidates with experience working on shipped MMOs and Unreal, offering “the opportunity to work on a game unlike anything that has ever been made before, with (among other things) meaningful goals to improve people’s lives and reduce toxicity and loneliness in the world.”
So how much of an MMO is it? Well, it’s worth noting that Spry Fox also calls its shooter Steambirds Alliance an MMO (a “massively-cooperative bullet-hell shooter”), so a traditional fantasy themepark dungeon grinder is probably not the order of the day here either. Given the description, we suspect the unnamed MMO might have more in common thematically with another upcoming Spry Fox game, Cozy Grove, which hails from the Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley corner of the genre – but of course, that one’s single-player and clearly boasts different graphics from the Unreal title, and it’s due to launch in the next few months, so it’s not the same. Whatever this new MMO is, it’s going to be one to keep an eye on.
We're hiring an engineering lead for a new, non-violent MMO project!
https://t.co/yW3ZLDnny3— Spry Fox (@spryfox) January 18, 2021
