It’s 2024 And All I’m Really Excited For Is The New (Not) Runescape
Brighter Shores seemed to appear out of absolutely nowhere. The new game from legendary developer Andrew Gower, lead designer of the original RuneScape and co-founder of Jagex, is an MMO that looks a lot like RuneScape while trying its best to differentiate itself from its predecessor. There has already been a very limited closed beta test before the game’s release on November 6, and for those who did manage to get in, feedback has been largely positive.
The world of Brighter Shores is divided into multiple cells, or rooms. You traverse from room-to-room to explore a larger area, discovering monsters, treasures, quests, and resources you can gather. It reminds me of the ‘choose your own adventure books’ that my parents had on the shelves – books like Ian Livingstone’s The Forest Of Doom. Gower and his studio, Fen Research, have said that the style of the game was designed around the idea of a classic tabletop RPG. That being said, the art style of the game isn’t very inspirational – you can check it out in the eight-minute demo below – but it does echo that sort of soft nostalgic feeling in the worn yellow pages of those adventure books.
Gameplay is exactly what you’d expect from a game so deeply influenced by RuneScape – professions are key. If you want to spend 700 hours mining rocks, then be the game’s guest. But there’s a lot more to it, with crafting skills like potion making, woodworking, and much more to spread out the joy of manual toil. Interestingly, one of the game’s selling points is your ability, as a player, to automate a lot of the grinding process. If that’s the case, Brighter Shores might be my brand-new favourite idle game. It looks like a very cozy experience. Brighter Shores is going into an indefinite early access period, so I imagine there’ll only be more added over time if the game is popular enough to justify it.
Beyond the brief look into the game via the closed beta and a short gameplay demo, we don’t know much about Brighter Shores at all. It will have classes, of a sort, with mages, rangers, brawlers, and so on, the stuff you might expect in a fantasy MMO. There will be world exploration and puzzles, but features like player trading won’t be in the game for early access launch. The beta testers have been told to be quiet, and while that might serve up red flags for other games, I don’t get the same feeling with Brighter Shores.
The game has a free-to-play model with the option to extend your playtime with a premium version. Basically, you get to try the game for free before deciding whether you want to go any further. This will work on a seasonal model, but without knowing how long the seasons will be, I assume it’s basically like a monthly subscription fee. I have no problems paying a monthly subscription fee, as long as the game is kept free from predatory MMO microtransactions and premium currencies.
Fen Research has also been very clear that it’ll have a detailed roadmap for future content in Brighter Shores. The title has been in development for quite some time (apparently an entire decade!), so I imagine many features are not-quite-ready. Overall, it’s a quiet-looking game that might just be excellent. Apparently, it also runs pretty well on Steam Deck, which means it might finally be time to buy one. Brighter Shores looks like the ideal game to carry around with you.
