Project: Gorgon recaptures old-school MMO magic

After five hours and an excited late-night session, Project: Gorgon sent me back to the messy, exploratory era of early MMOs. I had written previously that the old-school MMO feeling was gone, but this game overturned that assumption, reviving a sense of innocence and gleeful ineptitude.

The game is unapologetically odd: tutorials are minimal, and design choices favour discovery over fairness or simplicity. On the tutorial island a cursed warning explains only that straying into the wrong dungeon can summon zone bosses that will gank you. A helpful wizard asks for coordinates to teleport you, but entering random digits can fling you godknowswhere.

I’ve died to suddenly spawning brains, run into a level 30 skeleton in what seemed an early zone, and been hunted by a slime with the wrong damage type. At the heart of Project: Gorgon is an unconventional skills system. You learn abilities from NPCs ranging from Swords and Fire Magic to Psychology, which let me ask a Pig about its relationship with its mother so hard it dies.

project gorgon, mmo, old-school, skills system, npcs, zone bosses, tutorial island, discovery, teleport coordinates, psychology