Mossgrave / Dev log

Dev log 1

A skilling game that respects your evening

Mossgrave started with one question: what if the long climb to the top of every skill in a classic MMO fitted into a handful of evenings, without losing the feeling that you earned it?

Our answer is Renown. You train skills the honest way: chop, mine, fish, cook, fight. One skill takes about half an hour to reach level 10, and the next ten levels take another hour. Then, about seven minutes into your first life, a stone at the heart of the world makes you an offer. Lay your old self to rest. Every skill goes back to 1, and you rise again with Renown and skill points that make the next run about three times faster. Nobody forces you. The offer is simply too good to refuse for long.

Before a single model existed, we built a rough browser prototype to test that loop: chop, earn, reset, come back faster.

The first prototype. Chunky trees, a campfire, and a woodcutter with no idea what was coming.
The first prototype. Chunky trees, a campfire, and a woodcutter with no idea what was coming.
Skill trees survive every reset. Each one carries perks that change how you play, not only how fast.
Skill trees survive every reset. Each one carries perks that change how you play, not only how fast.

It worked. Run two felt like a different game from run one, and run three felt like a different game again. So we kept going.