BitCraft is a community-based survival crafting MMORPG from the San Francisco-based studio, Clockwork Labs, and if you haven’t heard of it until now, you’re in luck. Here are the full impressions from our first hands-on at GDC before the April 2nd alpha release.
BitCraft is inspired by games like EVE Online, Runescape, and Albion Online, where the focus is on long-term player progression measured in years, rather than hours. The game promises a fully editable world with a large player scale, and players can edit the terrain and build anywhere in a procedurally generated landscape.
The MMO is meant to be accessible from the beginning, with click-to-move gameplay that reinforces its relaxing setup and low stakes to start. You start with the crafting loop, which involves gathering materials, creating workstations, and setting up your first tent. Once you stake a tent, you can place a totem to prevent other players from interrupting it for a duration of time. Higher levels will require more resources and longer build time, but players in the world will be able to interact and assist you.
The survival aspects of BitCraft are light, with no permadeath, XP loss, item drops, or player vs player features. From crafting, I went on an adventure on a boat and discovered a new area where I met Traveler, an NPC from the old world before my existence. Each Traveler provides a distinct purpose to the player, for instance, exchanging materials for money.
When you encounter your first player-built town, you’ll be able to view the trade stalls to buy and sell items with other players asynchronously, as well as rent out housing for customization. The world is expansive, and the developers noted it can take multiple hours to cross one world, showing its tile set map. Players will be able to uncover more of BitCraft‘s lore through the dungeons, similar to Breath of the Wild’s pocket dimensions, which reveal more of the story.
The pre-alpha build focused primarily on the early game crafting and building. BitCraft‘s late game will heavily focus on creating and managing empires and territories, similar to the board game Risk. You’ll build advanced towns with higher tiers and level your character, which leads to competitive empire-building. The later game stages include setting up trade routes and territorial capture, and will be coming after the Alpha release.
Overall, the starting hours of BitCraft focus on trying out different professions and eventually encourage you to pick one progression at the higher levels and tiers. From there, you’ll meet other players with complementary progressions and lean in on cooperation with others in the world.
Over 1 million players have expressed interest in BitCraft‘s Alpha release on April 2nd, and during my brief time with the game, it was encouraging to see the crafting loop unfold and witness the individual player progression.
I look forward to seeing how the community progresses to the later game stages, but I’m also okay with committing to a casual play session with friends too. BitCraft’s alpha is playable on PC April 2nd, register on the website for more details.
