Last month, Ember Sword by Bright Star Studios put together a short alpha play test session where players of all kinds could test out the game for the first time. With the 2-day test several week’s in the past, the team has provided a few post-test notes, showcasing some of the milestones that players accomplished during their sessions. We also had a chance to speak with Game Director Max Zimnukhov, and get some of our questions answered as to the scope of the alpha test, and what else might be headed down the pipe.
Ember Sword is an upcoming MMORPG by Bright Star Studios that aims to bridge some fast-paced MOBA-like combat with a heavy emphasis on a player driven economy and community driven content. Last month’s alpha test was the first in their alpha stage of development, with their previous pre-alpha test primarily focusing on the technical aspects of the game’s online nature. When we tested the game previously, very little was available in the way of mechanics, such as combat, so the first question we asked Max was what the scope was for the last Alpha test.
“Since our last technical test in 2022, we have come a ways now in development.” Max stated. “It was time to begin to allow the wider community to see a bit of what is to come for Solarwood, the first nation to be released in Ember Sword. We were also excited to see some player behavior, test more aspects of gameplay and tech features.”
The team punctuated what Max said by providing some metrics related to the alpha test. According to Bright Star, over 2000 player surveys were completed, with a 92% recommendation rate from players. During the test, over 162 countries visited the website and over 6 million interactions transpired on the site during that time. Players gathered 120k resources, crafted 210k items, and collected more than 125k gold pieces during the two day play test.
“For this Alpha Test, we were able to accommodate thousands of play sessions over the two days, which was great. I have been a part of many game launches before, and I have not seen this level of excitement for an Alpha Test.” Max said. “We had some dedicated players who waited almost 3 hours to get in due to the demand! The next step for us will be something really exciting happening in June (TBA) which will be the next community opportunity. Then of course we announced that there will be another much larger Playtest happening in August. We are slowly opening the doors to more and more players.” He concluded. This did mark an important distinction as the original technical test was open only for land and badge holders, and the latest test was open to any player that was able to sign up.
Max did say that there may be some exclusive tests again in the future for land and badge holders, but there are no specifics related to that at this time. We also talked about some specifics related to the game mechanics. For example, the number of skills that were available for testing were 4 skills that were all split between the type of weapon you were using. The weapon’s skills couldn’t be swapped out or changed, so I wanted to know if the team planned on changing that in the future.
“Ember Sword will introduce 6 active skill (including ultimate) slots, which will be picked by player from variety of weapon skills - which will be opened with character progression (leveling).” Max said. As players love variety in the types of skills they can use, it was great to hear that not only will the game expand on the number of skills available, but we will also have a choice as to what skills to choose for our desired weapon as we level up. I also asked about additional weapon sets that we haven’t seen yet, as there were only 4 weapons available for the test. Max couldn’t give specifics as to what other weapons we might see in future tests, but in our previous offline demo, we were introduced to the greatsword, and Bright Star has shown off several concepts of their bow, which we anticipate will be another weapon headed to testing in the future. Max also said that gear stats will be based on crafting, and that the team is putting together a massive gear overhaul, which will provide far more variations in the gear players will be able to create. Players will also increase their level to gain access to new items, increase their base stats and open up new tiers of gathering, crafting, weapons and armor.
New to the alpha were also a larger variety of enemies, including a world-boss style monster, and several monsters that appeared to be location specific, such as the Treants in the forest, and the Boars in the grasslands. Max said that enemies won’t scale according to player level,, but that there will be zones that have stronger enemies, which means that early adventurers may need to watch where they travel, as they may find themselves in over their head depending on how far they choose to go from the starting areas. Enemies will also have their own stories unfold in future builds. “Ember Sword's future tests will reveal more story and more enemies for sure! We plan to have multiple factions of NPCs and creatures with own original story and goals” he told us.
Bright Star Studios proclaimed the alpha test quite a success with plenty of players providing a favorable survey, stating they would recommend the game to others. There was also quite a lot of interest on their website, which points to a gaming community that is curious to see what Ember Sword has in store. While our impressions deemed that the game is still a little rough around the edges, it’s obvious that there is only so much you can expect from the first alpha test of the game. We look forward to seeing how Ember Sword progresses in future tests.
