Let me pitch a game to you.

A free-roaming RPG where you create your own character, right? But it’s got Breath of the Wild’s climbing, gliding, and exploration. It has Skyrim’s cities and customization options and Minecraft’s crafting and random generation world. You can play it online with other people, or as a single player, if you want to.

How much would you pay? An exorbitant amount of money? A monthly fee? HA!

 It’s free! Veloren is an open-source game under the GPL 3 license, so it’ll remain free! Go ahead and download it now – right here. You might find me roaming around too. It’s not very popular, so there aren’t too many people playing right now.

Let’s break it down for you

Veloren isn’t exactly finished yet. It’s in a pre-alpha state, but don’t let that stop you. The game is already crammed full of fun features. You might think that this would cause the game to become bloated, or at least poorly optimized but lag was rare for me.

Create your character out of a handful of fantasy races: elves, dwarves, the undead – you know the drill. Pick out your starter weapon and starting city – I would recommend you start somewhere near a forest which is where the easiest monsters will be found. The rest is up to you. you’re free to do whatever you want in this massive continent that’s randomly generated.

Currently missing is much of the tutorial. You’ll get a message welcoming you to the game, but more helpful messages, such as something along the lines of “quick, make a pickaxe!”, are missing. Without ore, your weapons and armor won’t protect you from anything. The game doesn’t hold your hand much. The monsters are strong and unforgiving. You can dodge roll but combat still relies mostly on the strength of your gear than any strategy you might have. I leveled up my combat abilities, but it didn’t seem to do much to change combat to justify having it.

Playing Online

Despite having a single-player mode, the game is best played online or with friends. A good strategy is to have at least one or two people watching your back when exploring a cave. Although, this comes at a strange caveat. Online, almost anything can happen. I was exploring a cave when I came across another player going by the name Vagabond. He immediately dropped a sword, which I picked up. It was a rare sword that blew the crappy one I was carrying around out of the water. I don’t know who you were, Vagabond, but I can only assume that you are a gentleman and a scholar.

The community, I’ve found, has been pretty welcoming so far. I didn’t run into many trolls or griefers, though that could change depending on how the community grows.

Make Your Own Story

The fun in open world games like this is in the story you create as you play. One time, I was playing in single-player mode and was storming a stronghold when I discovered a traveling NPC player storming with me, completely unwarranted and uninvited. Needless to say, he killed all the monsters, and I stole all the loot.

There was another time when I was gliding around the mountains when I looked up and saw a freaking airship fly by. I was amazed and tried to chase it down but wasn’t fast enough to catch up to it.

Where to improve

It’s hard to criticize Veloren because it’s currently in a pre-alpha state. Anything I might take issue with can be patched out or fixed in the next build. So a year from now, if this section of the review is dated, this is why.

The towns are cool to find, but there’s little reason to explore or seek them out right now. You’ll need to find them so you can sell some loot and do some crafting, but beyond that they’re kind of bland. The NPCs all live in towns. Unfortunately, they all spout the same five messages and run around aimlessly. If the NPCs with something to sell stayed in shops and actually did more than wander aimlessly, I could see towns this big and explorable being fun.

There’s plans for the NPCs to be more dynamic. That sounds really awesome, but one thing they have got to do is stop getting in the way of my sword when we fight an enemy. Guards will swarm an enemy that has wandered into town. Trying to help said guards will nine out of ten times result in you accidentally hitting a guard. Doing so will turn the entire town against you and they won’t rest until you’re dead.

Single-player mode isn’t balanced well for single-players. The game pretty much requires you to play with another person so exploring isn’t so dangerous. If you prefer to play by yourself, you might be spending a lot of time grinding just so you don’t get pulverized.

Is Veloren worth playing?

Yes. Yes it is. Very much so. As soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m probably going to go back to playing it. I can’t wait to see what the developers do next. The world is charming and full of life. It’s so much fun to explore and run into your next encounter. Make friends and play with someone. I haven’t played an MMORPG that was this fun before. Does it have problems? Of course it does. But I was having so much fun that I didn’t mind the occasional issue.

Download the game for free and see for yourself. You know where I’ll be.