It’s early access launch day for Fen Research’s MMORPG Brighter Shores, a game so new to our radar that it wasn’t even a known entity when last year’s “most anticipated” awards was being tallied. First announced back in March, the game comes to us from Jagex co-founder Andrew Gower; it’s a RuneScape-esque MMO laid out on a cute top-down grid, stuffed with combat, questing, crafting, and everything else you’d expect from an MMO sandbox. As of 5 a.m. EST this morning, you can finally play it.
“Fen Research founder Andrew Gower, has created Brighter Shores as an alternative to many MMORPGs that only cater to those able to invest significant time. Brighter Shores allows characters to level up their professions whilst idle, meaning that players who lead busy lives can still progress through the world, and experience the ongoing storyline. However, if you are looking for a game to keep you busy, Brighter Shores has you covered there too. Every profession is brimming with an array of active gameplay features, for more efficient leveling. Gower’s vision for Brighter Shores is a game that can be rewarding no matter how much or how little free time players have to spend on it, without any pay-to-win elements. Brighter Shores allows players to explore, level up, and solve quests at a pace that suits them.”
Players can leap in on Steam right now, as the early stage of the game is free-to-play, though as we’ve been covering, anything past the newbie stuff is going to require a premium pass that is basically a subscription, though it’s about $6.48 US, so even cheaper than RuneScape. Do note that this really is early access, so not all features – like player trading – are in just yet.
We’ve also got the “New Recruit” trailer from Fen Research tucked down below, though you may have already seen it since somebody leaked it last week (sigh).
MOP had two writers in the press beta prior to early access, so stay tuned for their impressions today!
Well Brighter Shores early access is launched, but we’re experiencing some server crashes at the moment. Which means some people are getting kicked and become unable to log in for a while. Andrew and James are urgently looking into it.
— Paul Gower (@PaulJGower) November 6, 2024
