SEED is a deeply ambitious MMO life sim game, aiming to bring the feeling of an always online shared world to the genre. Players can create their Seedlings and give them routines and commands, similar to the indirect control in The Sims. These characters always exist, even when you are logged off, with the developer hoping to create a lived-in experience, similar to the online community of EVE Online, where every player shares the same world.
These characters exist in a shared world with everyone else, broken up into massive islands, where different towns can pop up across. The early stages of a town involve starting from scratch and collecting basic resources to meet basic needs. Once a town evolves enough to support a population, other players are likely to join.
The depth of the systems—some already in the build I got to see of SEED, some planned for after the early access launch—is both impressive and a bit intimidating. Towns need resources, like water and food, otherwise the Seedlings will not survive, which requires characters to take on jobs. These jobs require specialized skills and may be only a single part of a long process. One of the main examples from the demo was a water treatment plant, where the Seedling worked to provide the city with clean water, while crafting materials for homes and furniture required others to collect those resources and refine them, creating a semi-realistic supply chain.
As part of the always online experience, you can set routines for your Seedlings, including getting a job. They will follow these while you are logged out, allowing society to continue functioning and feeling lived in, even if you aren’t online at the same time as your fellow residents.
Everything is built by players, with people constructing companies where you can work, building homes to buy, or just producing resources so someone else can use them for crafting. The CEO of Klang Games told me that these systems are designed to make it difficult for a single character to do everything, thereby forcing cooperation and specialization.
There are tons of systems in place, such as mechanisms for determining how a town is governed, marketplaces for selling resources and goods, and social media for sharing how Seedlings are doing. Each Seedling also has needs to meet, desires to fulfill, and relationships that can either flourish or sour depending on how interactions go.
Some of these systems seem a bit shallow at the moment, particularly being able to message your Seedling, both in-game and via a mobile app, to give instructions. While the recognition of actions seemed quite impressive, with instructions like “take a shower” and “tell another character someone has been talking shit about them,” both resulting in the characters actually performing those actions, the text responses are lacking. These appear to be fully AI-generated, complete with clunky sentence structures and miscellaneous emojis capping off every message response. If the goal is immersion in this MMO life-sim, these messages certainly took me out of the moment.
Klang Games has ambitious plans, including a mobile app coming later this year that will let you check in on your Seedlings, send them commands, and adjust their schedules and behaviors. The early look at the app I got to see had most of these systems in place, and the adjustments were visible in the game in real time.
In terms of monetization, SEED is aiming to avoid a pay-to-win system. A one-time purchase of the game gets you a single Seedling slot, with a second earned through gameplay. More slots can be purchased with real money, but that also means far more management on the player’s end. I was told someone in the closed beta was running their own city, entirely made up of dozens of their own Seedlings, but that most players stick with two.
SEED launches in early access via Klang Games own PC launcher on July 21 for $30, with founder’s packs available for purchase. SEED is planned for Steam Early Access later this year.
