Happy Labor Day Weekend! A long weekend is in order after all of the work our indie devs have done over the summer. Speaking of work, several of the indie games we’ve been following are expanding their teams. However, one developer has run out of funds. We’ve got that, and much more for you to catch up on in this week’s Indie MMO Spotlight.
Book of Travels
Might and Delight gave us an update to last week’s Early Access delay, sharing that three major bugs were the primary reason for their decision to postpone launching Book of Travels. Rubberbanding, incorrect spawns, and invisible NPCs make up the “Unholy Trio” of bugs plaguing the testers. They are hard at work on fixing the issues, and say that Early Access isn’t as far off as many of us were thinking.
Chimeraland
There have been a slew of dev diary postings on the Chimeraland Twitter recently. This week alone, three dev diaries covered equipment optimization, sharing items with attendants, new catchable giant beasts called Numen Beasts, and evolving your horse into a Dragon Horse.
Attention, pet lovers! Chimeraland has a new catchable giant beast-type known as "Numen Beasts" . You can gain a lot of EXP for defeating them! Meanwhile, your Black Horse can now evolve into Dragon Horse, it's loyal and won't let you down! ?#Chimeraland #openworld #DevDiary pic.twitter.com/zutZVDCEBB
— Chimeraland (@Chimeraland) September 1, 2021
The Cycle
YAGER is looking for a community manager for The Cycle. If you are a “Russian speaking, passionate and knowledgeable gaming-fanatic and social media whiz” then you might be the person for the job. You can check out the position here.
Dual Universe
There’s been a lot of activity in the Dual Universe universe this week. Not only can you catch up on all the DU news in the September Newsletter, but the Novalogic team put out a little machinima this week with the update to asteroids and shields as the focus. There’s also been a bit of a cleanup, with new rules about leaving constructs in the markets. Lastly, there’s a new addition to the Dual Universe Roadmap. Update 0.26.10, affectionately known as Aries, will be released before the Demeter (0.27) update goes live. Tying back into the asteroid update, Aries will bring some changes to PVP with the addition of Shields v2.
Foxhole
Siege Camp has announced the next big Foxhole update will be revealed next week. Tune in to the Foxhole Twitch channel on Thursday, September 9, at 2 PM EDT to get a preview of the Summer Update.
Gloria Victis
With another year under my belt, I’ve noticed my mind isn’t quite as sharp as it used to be, hence my penchant for changing names like Gloria Victis to Gloria Victus as I did in last week’s Spotlight. Fortunately, Black Eye Games doesn’t have any memory problems and never forgets to publish their weekly update. This week, Update 286 covers the usual changelog, along with all of the bigger development updates.
Into The Echo
Back for the second week in a row, ETLOK Studios has published another blog. This time around, Akshay Kolte, Executive Producer of Into The Echo, covers the Hub and Spoke Progression System. Akshay notes that although other games use a similar system, ETLOK plans on expanding upon this core system to help players achieve character individuality.
OrbusVR
We’ve mentioned the Highsteppe Makeover coming to OrbusVR, and now it’s finally here. Patch 14.01 went live on August 31, restoring Highsteppe back to its former glory.
Perpetuum Online
It’s been a month or so since Perpetuum Online went free to play. If you aren’t one of the new players that has already checked out PO, jump in today and you can benefit from the x5 EP Weekend event that will run through Tuesday, September 7th.
Prosperous Universe
Simulogics hit a milestone this week with their 300th devlog entry. To celebrate the occasion, they handed the reigns over to the players and had them submit their own entries for this week’s blog.
TitanReach
As we reported earlier this week, it’s not looking too good for TitanReach. According to a post on the TR Discord, funding has dried up and development is being paused. The whole team will be looking for work while the hunt for outside investors continues. One world will still remain online, as will the website, and development will return to “a hobbyist state.” Although refunds won’t be available for everyone who has made purchases related to TitanReach, refunds will be made for anyone who purchased a Closed Alpha pack since they became available on August 9th.
A Township Tale
The VR-only MMO A Township Tale has been available on the Oculus Quest for several weeks now, and the latest patch was focused on improving hit detection. There were a few other updates that were Quest only, but the Impact Detection patch covered both the Quest and PCVR versions.
Trials of Ascension
Dragonfire Entertainment released a video this week showing off the Human race in Trials of Ascension. Videos for the Dragon and Raknar races will be coming in the future.
Zenith: The Last City
To add a little more spice to combat, RamenVR has added a new physics-inspired sword kit for the Blade Master. There have also been a few new additions to the development team, so we should expect to see more new things in the months to come.
Loose Ends
- World Seed - It looks like I missed a big announcement on the World Seed Discord a couple of weeks ago. As work continues on World Seed 2.0, the new version will be sold as a new game, with the current version rebranded as World Seed Classic.
