28th June 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we drop into a new fantasy MMO that’s something of a social experiment; we go back to an old favourite via something of a Director’s Cut; and getting the obscure categories first.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
Pax Dei, PC
I’ve been fascinated by Pax Dei ever since it was announced. It’s a medieval MMO and the unique part of it is that everything in the world is made by players. There are no pre-built towns or settlements; it’s all built by you. The same thing goes for all the equipment in the world. What’s even more interesting is that it’s something of a social experiment. Ultimately, the game’s goal is to have players organise feudal societies. It wants them to band together to make baronies, appoint knights and go on crusades. Look at some of the player-powered stories that have come out of spaceship MMO Eve Online – developer Mainframe Industries wants that. That’s a targeted comparison by the way; Pax Dei’s creative director, Reynir Hardarson, was one of the co-founders of Eve creator CCP.
Until now, the excitement has all been based on promises and some popular playtests. But on 18th June, Pax Dei launched. However, it launched only in early access, and it’s far from a finished game. A baseline implementation is there. The focus is house-building and there are many detailed and working systems based around it. Broadly, it’s very similar to other crafting games: chop trees, mine rocks, gather things, then refine them on various machines to make what you need. What’s slightly different is how open-ended the house building is, and that there’s a sort of building integrity system underpinning it. Roofs and walls will fall down if they’re not properly supported.