Worlds Adrift – Preview
The Worlds Adrift is a song by Phillip Callaghan, but Worlds Adrift is a game made by Bossa Studios. They have 9 games already developed, so they aren’t new to the industry. If you want to know what titles they have up their sleeves, among others there’s Surgeon Simulator, I am Bread, Emily Displaced,… Worlds Adrift is currently in Early Access, in which the goal – for the developers that is – is that the players report bugs and glitches. So it’s basically paying to become a game tester. Whatever your stance on it is, if the developer behind it was known to be dodgy on their releases, it would be best to let the game go without a second glance. However, Bossa Studios aren’t known to just drop a project, and thus it should be safe to invest in Worlds Adrift.
Worlds Adrift is an upcoming MMO that’s yet to be finished. The gaming industry has amassed quite some MMOs to give basically every player on the planet an addiction, but that has never stopped a developer from trying new things. The goal in Worlds Adrift is travelling from island to island and finding items and learning about the world around you.
The game starts up as a survival MMO, and it does so slowly. Dying will be commonplace, so you best get used to it. You can always just respawn and dive back in. As you traverse the islands, you can scan for knowledge of the lands, by scanning trees, rocks and artifacts. The knowledge translates into skills you can purchase from a skill tree. In the beta, you’re only capable of building an airship and upgrading it, but the full game is bound to have more skills to acquire. Of course, building needs resources, which you can get from the trees and rocks from the islands.
Movement is W,A,S,D, while spacebar lets you jump or boost when you are zip lining. Zip lining will be your main mode of traversal when you play in the beginning. This could do with some polishing, because some problems arise when you untether yourself and try to hook onto something. The reaction time between clicking and registering can be astronomical, this is probably due to higher pings, but it can be quite annoying when you take damage because the click didn’t register and you fall to your death. Boosting while zip lining shouldn’t eject your tip from the wall, as it currently does. It doesn’t always mean immediate death, but when you stumble upon landing, you can’t shoot a tether until you’ve gotten to your feet and this might make you end up in a revival room, because you fell over the edge.
Graphically the game has this ‘Zelda: Windwaker’ feel to it, and it really is quite gorgeous. What could help the atmosphere is if the draw distance was upped quite a bit. Right now islands are covered in mist and you miss out on the view, which doubtlessly is to be quite amazing, knowing that the islands are all afloat.
The sound is another thing to mention, the soundtrack is absolutely amazing, but when you play the game it sounds quite boring, as you only have the sounds of the surroundings envelop you. Though the sounds of birds and insects aren’t bad to set the scene of how unspoiled the world around you is, it does become rather grating after a while. The voice acting in the beginning of the game is on point. It immediately grabs you by the genitals and really makes you want to play the game.
Worlds Adrift should give you a more clear goal however, at first you wander around without really knowing what it is that your supposed to do. Games that let you discover what works often have a longer longevity because the players that learned the ropes have invested more time, but this game comes with so much mystery, with so many questions in the players mind that some guidance is quite welcome. Even if it’s a more tangible tutorial. Emerging from a revival chamber and having the world at your feet can be enthralling to some, but to most, there’s something as too much freedom.
Conclusion
Worlds Adrift is quite a beautiful game, the premise being interesting for an MMO. What the game could do with is some conflict in its narrative so that player feels more invested or has a more clear cut goal when starting out. The game that doesn’t ring as a cash grab but something that with a loving hand and a little time could grow into something special, that might not even come close to rivaling the big MMOs but might pull in quite a cult following.
Worlds Adrift - Preview,
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