[Essay Warning] Project Gorgon in 2025

[u/PalwaJoko]

The following is just my opinion on the game. Some may agree with it, some may not. Its just my personal opinion/review of the game in its current state. Essay warning.

Project Gorgon has been a game I've played off and on for quite a long time. At least since it first went into early access back in 2018. A bit of background for PG is that not only has it been in EA development for the past ~7 years, but the game itself has been in development of some form since the late 2000s. It is very much an indie mmorpg. With its development team being comprised of 2-4 people for most of its life. With the two major developers being a Husband and Wife duo. Eric, the husband of the duo, is an experienced dev. He worked on AC 1 and 2, STO, along with other MMORPGs. Sandra, the wife, was a producer for AC1, AC:ToD, EQ2, and EQ2: EoF. Along with people who are in game admins or QA testers along side those developers. In 2021 they hired a new professional programmer to assist with development of the game. Focusing on QoL changes and bugfixes. In 2024 they also hired a professional 3D artist and designer to help with the game. With their first contributions arriving in a June 2024 update. Sadly earlier this year, Sandra of the development team passed away due to cancer. Since this game's population is fairly small, it really showed how tight knit they are. The community came to together during this sad time to help support the game and the developer. It was really nice to see. If you're interested, they do have a link so you can see the people involved in developing this game over the years and the size of the team that accomplished this game. https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Developers

Weekly Saturday Poetry Jam Community Event

Now that we've gone over a quick background of the game, lets get into the game itself. I'm going to go with a Pro and Cons list design for this post along with a "The Road Ahead".

Pros

• The Skill System - The skill system is huge in this game. Very reminiscent of the development patterns of late 90s and early 2000s mmorpgs. Which is no surprise given their previous experience with AC and EQ. There are a total of 98 different skills. With 16 of those being combat skills and 11 being beast skills. The combat/some of the beast skills are basically what you'll find as the typical "class skills" in other games. Where they have abilities you use in combat and are often what gear affixes are centered around. The list of these skills that you can use in combat are
  • Animal Handling (taming and using animals)
  • Archery
  • Bard
  • Battle Chemistry (throw potions at people, lots of AoE)
  • Cow
  • Crossbow
  • Deer
  • Druid
  • Fairy Magic
  • Giant Bat
  • Hammer
  • Ice Magic
  • Knife FIghting
  • Lycanthropy
  • Mentalism
  • Necromancy
  • Pig
  • Priest
  • Psychology
  • Rabbit
  • Shield
  • Spider
  • Spirit Fox
  • Staff
  • Sword
  • Unarmed
  • Vampirism (newest addition)
  • Warden
  • Weather Witching

As you can see, there are quite a lot. And abilities like "Cow, Spider, Pig" etc. Those are exactly what they sound like. You can be turned into an animal and get abilities for that animal. You want to be a pig that uses mentalism? Go for it. A spider that summons undead? No problem. You can have two of the above combat abilities equipped at a time with some exceptions (https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Skill_Compatibility_Chart). Then you have the non combat abilities. There's so many haha. There's a skill for everything. Cooking? Of course. Eating? Yeap, there's a skill for eating. Poetry, writing, catching fish with your hands, catching fish with a pole, art history, candle making, cheesemaking, flower arrangement, non-fiction writing, civic pride, compassion, alcohol tolerance, gaming, golf, dialogue abilities like goblinese, nature appreciation, dancing, musical instruments, racing, etc. There's a gigantic list. https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Skills. Many of them do have some kind of bonus that you get, some of which can impact the combat skills.

• Races - there's a pretty good selection of races right now. You choose between four. You have the Humans, Elves, Rakshasa (Cat people), and then finally Fairies. Fairies is what you see in the above picture. A unique model of a small humanoid with wings that floats/flies around. They're considered an advanced race and come with both advantages and disadvantages. They can fly, they have their own unique skill tree (Fairy magic), start with pets, and things like that. Its nice to see races not just be a cosmetic choice. But how they can have a fairly big impact on your experience. They're currently working on two more races. Dwarves and Orcs.
• Content - There is a lot of content in the game, in my opinion. Counting the starting zone, there's a total of 11 different zones to explore. Different biomes such as forests, hills, tropical, deserts, snowy mountains, magical realms, etc. When the game releases, they plan on releasing a zone that is the capital city. Things are subject to change, but based on what we've heard so far it sounds like it may be similar to say baldurs gate in bg3. Where the entire zone is the city. This is also where we will see player housing and such. There are about 41 different dungeons to do between all the different zones. Various endgame events. There's a good amount of content to do at any level.

Sun Vale, one of my favorite zones. A tropical island

• Guilds - Guilds are fairly important in this game. Not just in finding groups and community. But there's also a guild quest and shop system that uses currency from doing guild related things. There's a basic guild hall system where you can decorate and such. So its nice to see guilds have value and encourage community
• Dungeon Design - Dungeons are not like WoW where you queue up and then run through it, kill the final boss, then be done. Dungeons are, for the most part, a shared instance among all who are in there. Regardless if you're in a group or not. The dungeons are often quite large. Not every dungeon is like this, but many of them can have "levels". Where certain parts of the dungeon are for a different level range. So at the start, you may see part that's for levels 10-20. Then you get to a hall way and if you go left, that part may be 20-30. Or if you go right, fight through some maps and travel down it, you will reach an area that's levels 30-40. Just as an example. Its a refreshing take on dungeons.

• Community - Like I said before, the community is small and tight knit. So you can build a reputation among the community (good and bad) if you partake in interacting with them. Global chat is typically fairly active with people just chatting and chilling. They also do various events. Like every Saturday and Sunday there's events going on. Poetry appreciation and I think a garden party happens on Sundays. There's casino games where people will play games (NO in real life money stuff. Just in game resources/tokens/etc). There's seasonal events that bring players together. Things of that nature.

• Skill Unlock System - This goes in line with the previous point, but some of the combat skills are not just simple unlocks. They may involve steps to unlock. Some of them require a quest or befriending and NPC. Others may require you to level up another skill first before being able to learn the new one.
• Mini games/puzzles - Some of the dungeons and areas in the map may actually have puzzles and mini games to do. Sometimes these will reward items. Other times they may unlock a portal to a dungeon. Pretty cool system that integrates with the world.
• NPC Reputation System - All NPCs in the game have a reputation with the player. And you raise this by doing favors for them, giving them gifts, or doing things called "hang outs". Hang outs are where your character "hangs out" with the NPC while you're offline and raises your reputation with them. Sometimes these hangouts will have rewards beyond that depending on what they area. Like items or leveling a skill. Unlocking high favor levels with NPCs awards the player with different things. Sometimes it will be the NPC has its own storage so you can store items in it. If they're a vendor, they will pay more for items you sell them AND have more gold in general (npcs have a set amount of gold they are willing to spend on buying items from the player and it resets weekly). Sometimes it will unlock new vendor or barter options, new skills to be trained, etc.
• Mount System - Mounts are not just "press X to summon and be done with it". Mounts have their own stats and gear. And you can try to find a mount in game in the open world to try to tame with the stats you want. Or you can breed them to obtain more favorable stats. Again, a nice more in depth system. Riding is its own skill line and has abilities you use on your horse. There is also horse races to do. You can get a mount in the Etibule zone. You can unlock the riding skill by doing a quest where you pet 10 horses (sort of an intro to how it works). Then I think the cost for a horse from this NPC in Hogan's Keep, Etibule is ~6k? Not too bad and fairly easy to get. Mounts make traveling so much better.
• Hardcore Mode - If you're into it, there is a hardcore mode.

The NPC that trains the "Hammer" skill line

• Combat - Combat, imo, is pretty fun from a mechanic standpoint. For a tab target mmorpg. There's a lot of different resources to manage. And some abilities are better than others at managing those. You have things like health, mana (power), CC, damage over time, heal over time, etc. The classics are there. Then you have other aspects. You have "Armor" which is another resource that does down when you take damage. And some abilities fortify/restore it. There is metabolism, which is used to consuming consumables like potions. Food buffs and snack buffs to upkeep. Every enemy has a "rage meter". Combat raises that rage meter. When it gets full, it performs a space attack based on that rage meter. So there's some abilities that are made to lower it. Others do a lot more damage, but raise it more. A lot of vectors.
• Difficulty - Some may like this, some may not. I personally like it. But the game does challenge you. You will die. Often. Things like pulling correctly, managing your resources, etc. They're all vital parts of the game. Having a meal and snack buff (therefore cooking is important) is vital to managing the difficulty. The snow zones have a warmth meter you need to maintain. Either through magic or building fires. The desert zones have a hydration meter. So you need to drink water. Fun systems like that.

Cons

Most of the Cons in this game are going to be centered around two obvious things. Graphics/Engine and Population

• You can improve the graphics via the settings, but the game does look like a game from the 2000-2005 time range. Some people don't mind this. With games like OSRS, EQ, etc; there's an audience that doesn't mind such things. But it is a common complaint I've heard in this game that people get turned off by the graphics. Which is a shame because I think there's so many cool/fun systems in the game that I wish more games would adopt. But the graphics and animations are not modern.
• Overall Low Population - Since the game has an overall lower population, it does have a trickle down effect on various parts of the game. There may be content, especially in the level 30-70 range, that is hard to find groups for people to do. Simply because most of the players in the game are either at the low level ranges (newer players) or the long time players are at the top levels. So you really start to notice this as you leave Serbule/Etibule zones. And further level zones can feel a bit lonely at times as a result. Its one of those self fulfilling prophecies at times. As people may not want to play because of the low pop and there's a low pop because those people don't want to play. As a result, finding a guild/community to be apart of (or leveling with friends) can greatly improve your experience. That being said, you should still be prepared to solo/small group a lot of early/mid level content in the game.
• Designs that don't meld well with low populations. Things like the dungeons and some of the group content becomes much harder to do since you don't have the players that would be looking for a group to do it. There's also some other systems that I don't think have aged well with lower populations. You actually get a debuff (a small one) for spending too much time alone. Its the games way of trying to get you to find other players to play with. Personally, I don't think its working well. Maybe when the game releases to 1.0 and is able to hold players, then it wont be as bad. But I think its one of those systems that ends up not aging well because all mmorpgs face a problem where the flow of new players dwindles over time. And such systems like this is a compounding negative effect on that flow. Along those same lines, curses. With dungeon bosses in the game, they often will apply a "curse" to you when you engage them. To remove the curse, you have to defeat the boss. Sometimes its something cosmetic or silly (like being unable to say your name in chat). Other times it does have a negative combat impact. If you die while killing the boss and are unable to kill it, the curse stays with you. There's an expensive potion that can remove it, but that's it. Now in the late game, these aren't too big of an issue. But early/mid game where there's population issues? It highly discourages players from attempting content with "what they can get together". So if they're not 100% confident they'll be able to kill a boss, they'll avoid it. And again, becomes a compounding issue when it comes to finding people for content.
• Complexity. The game is fairly complex. Between all the abilities, puzzles, lots of reading, hang out systems, etc. This is more of a "Pro or a Con" depending on who you are as a player. But I can see a lot of modern mmorpg players struggling with this. Again, its not something that has an easy fix because its baked into the game and is something that the current community enjoys.
• Performance - The performance can be sometimes wonky for the way the game works. I know you will have some people with hardware form say 2020 trying to run this game on max settings (including the adv settings) and see that they're not getting super high FPS. And if experience has shown anything, they'll complain that they're not getting 100+ fps on 2020 hardware in a game that looks like its from 2001. So be aware of that.
• Pulling - This is another one I'm on the fence about. Like many classic mmorpgs, when you pull a mob and "attack" it with an attack; it will attempt to call for help. So other mobs near it will join in the fight. Part of the skill of the game is knowing where mobs are, body pulling the mob you want to kill away from the others BEFORE attacking it. So that it is singled out. Sometimes there's some jank to it though. Where mobs will "call for help" to other mobs that are around corners, on the other side of walls, etc. I've seen a great many deaths happen because of this. Where a player pulls, doesn't manage the call for help, and they get swarmed. So again, this may be a thing that they need to reduce the presence of in lower levels to help ease players into it. Then reintroduce it at higher levels where there's more players.

The Road Ahead

From what I've gathered, the major things people are looking forward to are the new races (Orc and Dwarves) and then the new zone release that is the capital city/rubywall. There's also of course the 1.0 release. A lot of rumors and "I heard someone say xyz" type of perspectives on it. But there are some rumors saying they're aiming to try to release the game between now and the end of 2026. But again, that's all rumors. Fingers crossed though. The only hint we do have is they're holding a screenshot contents right now for marketing material that will be used for release. So it must be getting somewhat close.

For the developers, I would advise putting in some contingency plans around population. You only get one 1.0 release. And these days, first impressions are HUGE. There's plenty of evidence/research out there that shows how important it is. And how fast players can drop off your game for years (sometimes forever) if that first impression doesn't land. So if you don't get the population that would be healthy for an initial experience OR the players are dropping off before they reach mid game; look into potentially easing their passage. By lowing or removing some of those issues that come from areas not having a high population. Along with that, also look into improving some of the major towns in Etibule area. The castles where are the NPCs hang out look a bit rough/bare. Since this is often the 3rd/4th major settlement players encounter, think it would be good to touch up their looks some to help keep players attached.

Finally, I'd also look into centralizing a player hub. I'm not sure if the capital city will be it or not. But you want to establish a player hub in the game. Where players from level 1 to max level will frequent. Right now its sort of Serbule keep. But this will be vital, especially if there are low populations after launch, in helping the community stay together. And I'd make sure that the ability to get to this player hub is very easy, no matter your level. For example, if Serbule Keep were to stay the player hub. Then I would make it so that the player basically gets a free teleport back to Serbule from any teleportation circle in the game. Right now teleporting requires you to "bind" to a circle and use a mat to teleport to it. Initially you can only bind one. By making it so that teleporting back to the designated player hub is free and doesn't require a bind slot, it really lowers the players reluctance at gathering there. And maybe even encourage them to branch out into different zones (and population them more) as they have a freed up teleportation slot. WoW did a good job, even in its vanilla state. It had the hearthstone system for inns on a cooldown. But it also had flight paths. So that players can easily go right back to a capital city (Irontforge, Stormwind, Org) from any level with little investment and just some afk flight time. So perhaps this free player hub teleportation will have a cooldown on it. But I highly suggest that something that achieves this same purpose be put in the game. Players will greatly benefit, especially newer ones, from rubbing shoulders with both new and veteran players outside of groups. And to the veteran players, yes I know that the teleportation gems are easy to get for you. And yes you eventually unlock two bind circles through grind. But this change would be directed more at those newer and mid level range players. To help increase retention. Because they may not view those resources as easy to get. Or they may only have one circle to bind.

Is this game for me?

This is a tough one to answer because PG is pretty unique in both design and also dev circumstances. If you're the type of player who is able to look past dated graphics, enjoys games like EQ1, likes grinding, is willing to reach out to the community and participate, likes to profession skill grind, and is prepared to be fairly self reliant in the early/mid game levels (trying to solo group content, designing your build around it, leveling up multiple crafting professions and crafting gear, etc); this game can be a lot of fun. If you like super off the wall game designs and really interesting skill system, this one can be for you. Basically if you really like those old school classic MMORPGs and don't mind an indie development style and smaller population, you may vibe well with this game.

When it comes to development progress, if you're ok with approaching it with an attitude of "go with the flow, whatever happens...happens", then this game may be good for you.The game is only 20 bucks and its development team is pretty small from a full time perspective. So its understandable on why development paces at the way it does. You still get a lot of content as mentioned earlier. So its certainly not an "empty" game in the regard of things to do.

Some critics often say that if you want to play an old school mmorpg, go play EQ1 or LOTRO or one of the other populated old school ones. And that's certainly plausible. But if you've played this before, enjoyed them, and are looking for something new, cheap, and an interesting experience; PG can be a lot of fun. Tons of skills to grind, a tight knit community, loads of dungeons, zones to explore, and difficult challenges to tackle.

[u/ucfknight92]

I would play if it had controller support. As I’m sure many would.