Bigpoint has quite a few games that a lot of people are playing but few are talking about. From Farmerama to Battlestar Galactica Online to Dark Orbit, they have quite the diverse free-to-play catalog. Today at GDCO in Austin, Texas, I got a chance to get by their booth to see the first all North American developed MMO they are publishing. Titled Ruined Online, it’s a fast paced third-person arena combat shooter. It’s built on the Unity engine, so it will be playable on all browsers, Mac and PC. The world is post apocolyptic, and the first set of arenas are set in San Francisco.
I was able to explore two areas of the new, bombed out, destroyed San Francisco. These were the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point. Both locations were very identifiable. There will be death match and capture the flag modes, but the capture the flag types will all come with some kind of unique twist. One such twist was described to me. In Fort Point, there’s a mode players will be able to choose where they will be battling over cannonballs, trying to load a giant cannon in the middle of the yard, and shooting at a tower. The first team to do this wins the map.
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There will be six classes at launch that players will be able to choose from. Characters will be persistent, and quite customizable. Players will choose their class for their villain (all players are villains competing to be the biggest, bad-ass villain). The six classses ultimately available will be Mutant, Assassin, Mad Medic, Crawler, Samurai and Enforcer. The mutant was interesting looking because he sort of picks up garbage and uses it as body parts (like a frying pan on his head and a stop sign as part of his chest). The crawler will be interesting as well, because it’s a person who has lived most of their life underground and has suddenly come up to the top, so there will be twists associated with that. The game is primarily a shooter, but there will be a blend of melee that will give it a unique twist. It uses the traditional shooter control school of WASD and mouselook.
The game will take on a microtransaction model and they haven’t finalized yet what that will look like, but as in all their games, you can play without spending a dime if you want to spend the time. Everything can be obtained through playing. Ruined Online will be heading into open beta late this year.