"TMORPG" Book Of Travels will launch in early access on October 11th
I'm still extra eager to set out on this trail
Might And Delight's "tiny Multiplayer Online RPG" Book Of Travels has scheduled itself a new early access launch date after its most recent delay. As M&D previously reassured fans, it is indeed a shorter wait than I'd feared. Their cozy online RPG is now setting out into early access on October 11th, with plans to work towards a full launch in two years.
Might And Delight say they've now squashed those three nasty bugs players found during the closed beta and are ready to commit to the mid-October date. They've pulled together a new version of their launch date trailer right here to prove it.
Book Of Travels' RPG bits sound inspired by the stuff of pen and paper adventures. You'll create a character with their own quirks and flaws that affect how you'll play. You even have a freewrite text box on your character sheet to spin yourself a nice backstory. The magic of the world is created through special teas and tying knots, a nice and down-to-earth approach over the usual explosive fantasy stuff of other RPGs. The combat sounds high stakes but avoidable, perhaps fitting for a laid-back RPG. M&D lead programmer Jens Berglind got into some conflict specifics back in August during a Nordic Game Conference interview.
As a former MMO enjoyer who's lately lost their appetite, I've been quite interested in M&D's take on what Book Of Travels' TMO elements will be like. Book Of Travels will have a symbol-based communciation system rather than text chat and will feature relatively rare meetups between players. It begs comparison to Journey, another beautiful, low pressure exploration game with infrequent player meetings.
Even more so, as Thatgamecompany have also tried their hand at a sort of lite MMO. Sky: Children Of The Light is only on phones and Switches so far, so you'll have to forgive me mentioning it, but I've been playing over the last month to see if the mini MMO thing feels like what I want. It does, generally! I'm still a sucker for daily quests and activities and all, but it mostly strips out the need to min-max a character—a practice of hyper optimisation that I've just never had the stomach for in MMOs. I'm quite interested in seeing how M&D's mini MMO differs from TGC's. With at least two on the table, maybe I'll get my wish for tiny MMOs to be the next big thing.
One particular online game feature that Book Of Travels is going to adopt is a seasonal structure. They've not gotten deep into specifics on exactly what each season (chapters, M&D are calling them) will contain, but in today's announcement post they do let on two important facts. Chapter Zero will run for the full duration of their early access period, which M&D say they're planning to be two years.
It seems like a hefty estimate, though the line between a "full launch" online game that gets updated for years and one which technically begins in early access feels increasingly meaningless anyhow. During that two years, M&D say they're planning to add a slew of features, some of which being playable instruments, triple the size of the map, pets, cooking, new story events, more skills, and quite a lot more.
You can find Book Of Travels over on Steam where it's at last launching in early access on October 11th.