Revisiting Project: Gorgon – New Starter Zone
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about Project: Gorgon even though I’ve wandered around in the game a bit over the holidays. Part of my interest was due to the fact that they added a new animal town, and life as an animal in P:G is an appealing thought to me. It’s different, just like this game.
Another interest was in the new starter island the team introduced. Previously, all new characters spawned in this winding expanse of underground caves. The game got a lot of meh feedback about the old tutorial area. So even though being stranded on an island as the noob zone is nothing new, having a more open-air area to explore with more than just brown cave walls feels like a big improvement.
I decided to re-roll my character to see what it was all about. My original character wasn’t that far in the game, but I had worked up skills like fishing and animal taming that I’ll have to work up again. However, I needed to re-roll this character anyhow because due to some confusion in the login and character creation phase, I ended up having to attribute my character to an account name I didn’t want to choose. Once we switch over to playing on Steam, I didn’t want any confusion. So I re-rolled her to my proper account and now my desire for account/character order has been filled.
I still haven’t left the starter island yet as I feel there are some things I’m still missing. Most of the NPCs from the cave can be found on the island, as well as some of the puzzles (the light-up portals) and rewards (Charm Rat!). There are some new quests because, obviously, I need to find a way off the island. But overall, I find it a good location to work up the basic skills since you’re never at loss to find a low-level monster to bash. Gear drops are also plentiful, and I rarely ran on the island without seeing at least one other player around.
That’s one thing I think is interesting about P:G. No matter how indie, alpha and small the community, every time I log in, there’s always global chat and trade going on. It’s a stark contrast to some of the newer MMOs where chat is locked away in tiny channels or in guild chat only.
Overall, I like the look and feel of the new island. I think that maybe it could have been a touch bigger as some of the spawns are dense and locations are sometimes placed on steep climbs – the island has a huge rocky hill in the middle. While P:G still has a long way to go in the graphics area (and the team knows this), the island aesthetics are much more pleasing than the original cave tutorial.
It also feels much more open-ended and nudges the player to figure things out from the start. There’s no just walking to the entrance of the cave and leaving. You have to quest and figure out how this teleportation thing works. Just a nice old-skool feel.
I’m holding back on playing P:G too much, despite being a Kickstarter backer, because I don’t want to spoil too much of the game before it gets further in development. This team has a lot of cool ideas and I continue to be excited to see where it’s all going!