Perpetuum is an indie MMO from the creators of… well Perpetuum. They’re a freshman team of ten developers, and in my humble opinion have knocked this first pitch out of the park. Like many other commentators, I feel that I can’t really help but bring up EVE here. If EVE were a Philly Cheese Steak pizza extra everything, than Perpetuum is the humble cheese pizza, low on flavor and texture at the moment, but with infinite possibilities left, especially for those who aren’t so into Philly Cheese Steak. This is not a bad thing however, the basic design of player driven trade, gathering and combat is one that allows the players to create the real texture of the game. The marks left by players are what really decide what this game is, what it means, and what experience it’s going to leave with the people who play it.

The geography of Perpetuum is a set of six islands, 3 alpha islands that player start on, and 3 beta islands that are no holds barred PvP with outpost ownership. Each Alpha island has an Alpha Terminal for it’s respective megacorp and it’s here that the markets are already beginning to buzz. Well to be honest, more like sputtering up and down with wild abandon, but that’s to be expected for the first few weeks. The PvE players are bringing back the primary research components which double as kill bounties, the marketeers and industrialists are taking missions to bring those standings up, and the miners are stocking up on mining charges and storing their admittedly afkedly gathered ores. Even the familiar sight of checking for prices within range and seeing massively inflated values to entice players into the beta islands, ahh the march of progress.

Still, the lack of suicide ganking makes the alpha islands a rather peaceful place for the players that prefer that. There is a rare element that is wholly unknown on the alpha islands though, so there is still definite reason for industrialists to dream of moving to the beta islands at some point. A balancing system within the game is that the total weight your engine has to move reduces your speed, so if you’re willing to leave some modules behind you can get a pretty good speed boost. Wouldn’t bet my most expensive bot on it, but it can get you out of tight spots if you decide you’d rather live on the edge.

My favorite two parts of these kinds of games are that first, it’s a game of the long view, second you can have as much fun in a role that is made solely by players as you can in any of the roles that the mechanics suggest. I’ll take that in reverse order. My first act in the open beta was to get the money to start my own corporation, I didn’t hire anyone I just used it to get to know the ropes. Now that we’re in the early access, I got that corp set back up again and have been hiring. It’s been a lot of fun, talking to people, using my “sales woman” voice for cold calls. Getting all the little details worked out, and making sure the people are taken care of while I’m busy working or doing more official corp business. Still a little low on numbers, but as always, I just feel more alive when I’m organizing something and solving problems. The first feeds into that, I’m happy to set things aside, to drop capital into big projects that pay off in the long run, to know I’m definitely logging in tomorrow to check on all the things I started today. It’s okay to plan big, because big is possible, you just need to find the smaller steps to make it happen. And once you’ve done it, once you’ve accomplished something, it’s there in the fabric of the game, the prices of the market and the stories the next generation of corp leaders are going to tell their corps.

Ahh, I love the smell of possibilities in the morning.

The setup for skills is more or less a point buy version of EVE’s system so you never miss a skill up for sleep, work, or fatal injury. It’ll all be there as soon as you log in, 1 point per minute. Unlike EVE, it’s skills come in 10 ranks accentuating the diminishing returns feeling. While a player with a 10 may be much better at that particular skill than a 5, she had to give up a significant number of what could have been rank 5 skills to get it. (One that I invested in getting to ten was the relatively low cost refining skill and it cost me 25-30k ep.) Later on this will allow newer players to compete through specialization as in EVE, but this early in the cycle, it means you can get to the average needed to fill a hole in a corp fairly easily.

I’m pretty sure I’m just rambling at this point so yeah… Check it out, you might love it, you might hate it, but especially EVE players should give it some time so you can get a feel for how things are really fitting together. It’s the details that make it different, and they tend to count in a game like this.