Generally a sport makes you are feeling soothed simply by taking a look at a screenshot, even when it’s not that fairly. So it’s with Brighter Shores, the brand new undertaking from Andrew Gower, creator of hoary outdated massively multiplayer role-playing sport RuneScape.
Alongside together with his brother Paul, Gower did many of the early improvement work on RuneScape (which launched in 2001) and based the studio that made it, Jagex. The Gowers cashed out and left Jagex again in 2010, and little has been heard of what Andrew has been as much as since. Now we all know: He’s spent a lot of that point — 10 years, apparently — making one other old-school MMO with a comfortingly nerdy grid-based design. (The press launch justifiably calls these orderly isometric dioramas Gower’s “immediately recognisable model.”)
Brighter Shores will likely be a free-to-play sport with a “cozy, stress-free ambiance.” It’s set in and round a peaceable coastal city within the fantasy land of Adothria. There’s a heavy deal with crafting, in addition to three new character lessons to strive: Cryoknight, Hammermage, and Guardian. Gower says he goals to scale back the grind typical of this type of sport, and his studio Fen Analysis plans to supply an “all-inclusive” premium move unlocking extra content material moderately than numerous microtransactions.
In any case this time, Gower has additionally lastly left Java behind. RuneScape was launched as a browser sport written on this humble programming language, and didn’t transition to its personal shopper till 2016, after the Gowers had left. However Fen Analysis has constructed its personal customized engine and programming language for Brighter Shores, known as Fenforge. (Geographical trivia: each studio and engine are probably named after the Fens, a marshy flatland space within the east of England that extends north of Cambridge, the place each Jagex and Fen Analysis are primarily based.)
Brighter Shores will likely be coming to PC and Mac through Steam later this yr.
