Link has been fixed. SORRY!
Ars Technica has a more detailed look at Gatheryn than I’ve seen anywhere else (including at Gatheryn’s site!).
Gatheryn is a Steampunk based game, set in an alternate history where the Information Age and the Industrial Revolution collided — cyberpunk set in the Victorian/Edwardian era.
Gatheryn’s gameplay should be familiar to players of Puzzle Pirates, Neopets and other casual MMOs of that ilk. There is no combat, no kill ten rats and no dying. You complete your missions, quests, crafting and so on solely through minigames, which are said to be Steampunk versions of the top 50 web games.
Which doesn’t immediately make me very excited. Themed versions of popular minigames seem to be all the rage these days — kids MMO Wizard 101 uses similar minigames (with a wizard theme) as a means to regain mana.
But, the MMO world is really short on Steampunk MMOs of any sort, and heck, dressing up in Victorian clothes, but with a robot arm holding the leash of your clockwork monkey, well, that’ll be worth a look or two.
12 thoughts on “Gatheryn, Steampunk-based casual MMO, out this summer?”
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Chalk a potential new MMO off my list. I don’t do mini games. I might walk around in Gatheryn to see the sites of their SP world but I won’t be playing it. *sigh* To top it off, a rehash of top mini-games is sooo. grrr… why did they bother?
Busted link is busted.
@Saylah
I was just thinking the same thing myself. Funny how quite a few of these new “MMO’s” think that mini-games are the wave of the future.
Jason (resident drunken idiot of Channel Massive who likes to sign his comments because it makes them 10x more valid)
The part about using the usual mini-games is rather ‘meh’ but I’m still interested. Sometimes I log into Wizard101 just to play the mini-games, and from time to time I thought it would be cool to earn equipment and stuff that way, so the idea that the world is composed of mini-games doesn’t bother me too much. Though, I do have to say that I’m surprised the concept will be used for -EVERYTHING-. Guess I thought it would be a bit more traditional.
We’ll see how it goes, I suppose. Perhaps having the game be a mini-game-fest means it’ll release sooner than expected. 😛
Puzzle Pirates isn’t for everyone either… but writing it off as a lesser game is just dangerous as saying F2P games are evil. As far as that goes, how is the crafting “minigame” palatable as a way to spend a ton of time, but when “minigames” are the main focus, somehow it’s bad? What is *combat* but one giant well-polished minigame?
There are some perception issues going on, methinketh.
That said, yes, a reskinned Bejeweled can be pretty mindless to those of us “veterans” in the field, I don’t dispute that. Still, I play Puzzle Quest, which isn’t much more than that, but a blast to play. There are also a lot of people out there who do like casual minigames, and are put off by the combat heavy DIKU grinds that the MMO mainstream has embraced. Gatheryn is nicely poised to grab a fair niche, if it can pull things together into a nice polished package.
…but yes, it would be nice to see a Steampunk game for those who are firmly in the mainstream.
Massively has some more news about Gatheryn from GDC. I dunno, it’s really shaping up nicely, and did you really want another level grind MMO? Honestly?
True, Tipa — it’s one of the reasons I’m interested in the game. If I could get a high enough score in Gathetris / Gatherjeweled / whatever and be able to win a cute little pet, a flaming sword, or some straw pants, that’d be sweet. 😛 After thinking about this for a while, I am not particularly bothered by mini-game-fest anymore. I just hope they do a nice spin on the mini-games, though. Kind of like how The Ancient Quest of Saqqarah, though “just another match-3” game by design, really sucked me in with its more unique spin on the genre.
If you follow that link to Massively in the comment above yours, it looks like it will be integrated into the world. I didn’t mind Neopets’ mini games, nor Wizard 101’s, but I did end up playing one or two a LOT more than the others. So my only real objection is, will there be a couple of games I find fun, plus fifty ones I don’t enjoy but must play anyway?
@Tesh – It’s bad for me yes. I don’t play mini-games which means if this is all it offers, I won’t be playing it. 🙂 I play RPG type games and I don’t count standing around doing mini-games as RPG content. I think that’s a little different than painting a brush across all F2P. I’ve tried mini-games and I don’t like them. I didn’t do them in W101 either. Oh I tried them, even though I know I don’t like mini-games and still came to the same conclusion. I don’t find them fun and not a pleasurable way to spend my entertainment time.
Fair enough… I’m just saying, give it a shot. You might find something you like. And I might hate it, despite loving Puzzle Pirates… y’never know. I do know that I’m tired of the DIKU viral strain, and it’s nice to see alternatives.