Project: Gorgon, an indie MMORPG that recently left early access, has managed to recapture the chaotic and wondrous spirit of old-school online RPGs. It achieves this not through nostalgia alone, but by fully committing to a philosophy of player freedom, absurdity, and emergent discovery.
The game thrives on a small but dedicated player base and rejects modern conventions of fairness and hand-holding. Its tutorial island exemplifies this: players can wander into cursed dungeons or get randomly teleported by inputting wrong coordinates. Death is frequent and often unavoidable, but it's also a literal skill you can level up.
The heart of the experience is a wildly unconventional skill system. Players can train in standard skills like Sword Fighting, but also in bizarre disciplines like Psychology, which can be used to interrogate a pig about its mother until it expires. Unlocking these skills involves obscure, multi-step processes that feel like genuine discoveries rather than checklist quests.
This design fosters organic social interaction. Players naturally seek each other out to solve puzzles or share directions, bypassing wikis in favor of live conversation. The world is filled with strange, interconnected tasks—from delivering cheese through dangerous forests to trying to make psychic mantises fall in love—that constantly pull players into new, unexpected adventures.
Project: Gorgon is a grindy, chaotic, and often incoherent game, but its systems are designed to collapse into one another, creating a uniquely engaging and social sandbox. For anyone yearning for the unpredictable magic of early MMOs, it offers a potent and wonderful dose of rediscovery.