Fantastic Pixel Castle Dev Stream Shows In-Progress Wychwood Blue Zone in New Development Update

Fantastic Pixel Castle, emphasizing their “partner with players” studio values, held a Wychwood Blue Zone Showcase to show off the biome from their in-development MMORPG, codenamed Ghost. 

This showcase happened over the weekend, accompanied by a Q&A. The team has notably shown off some very early work on Ghost before, and their dedication to transparency is reflected here too. 

So why Wychwood and what’s the point? Going into the lore of the game, there was a planet that blew up, now there are all these shards. Wychwood is there “because every RPG needs some kind of medieval forest”, according to Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, but less generic. They were inspired by the dark forests in northern Europe, places like Russia or Poland, with tight woods that feel closed and vaguely threatening even if nothing's about to jump out at you.  they then talk more about their design inspirations–from colors to creatures–and how to create this foreboding sense of place while also challenging players' expectations. 

We get to see what the game looked like in February 2024, August 2024 before they started play testing,  and then we finally get to see the zone now, Although there's lots that still needs to be done and there are still a bunch of placeholders.

Their plan is to let everyone own a skyship and fly to the different shards so it’s not just jumping through a series of portals all the time. We get to see a ship in the current prototype build, and they talk about lore and exploration and how they plan to eventually build upon what they have now. While what they're showing off in the current build is all handmade, as they've talked about in the past, blue zones will have plenty of procedurally generated elements  when they are final. 

Related:

Interview: Chatting With FPC's Greg Street About Ghost MMO Testing, Blue Zones, And 2025

Hit play on the full video for the longer discussion and to the footage if you're curious about development progress for Ghost. They received a lot of questions, answering some (yes, there will be cats) and promise we'll see more streams on the way.