I was glancing through the Steam ‘Free to Play’ section, lamenting how bad Star Trek Online was when I tried it, when I spotted Realm of the Mad God. The vintage 8-bit style caught my eye, and it promised fast-paced cooperative action which would be a refreshing change from the heavy fantasy RPGs I’ve played lately. It’s no more and no less than that. You move around the map, and you shoot in whatever direction you click. Spacebar launches a spell attack (speaking as a Wizard, the default starting class) which does area of effect damage. As you kill enemies and complete quests, which mostly amounts to killing boss versions of the enemies, you gain levels and find loot. The best comparison would be Diablo, if you dropped the graphics down to Gameboy Color level, with a little Robotron 2084 mixed in.
The game is diehard, in the way that when your character dies, he or she is simply dead. No recovering the items they had (though you can store stuff in a chest back at the Nexus), you just start right back with another character. Playing cooperatively is very much encouraged, as you get full XP for any enemy that chip in on with damage, and even better, you can click any player on the minimap and teleport straight to them. Be wary of going above your class, as that’s a very quick way to get beat down. All in all, if you’ve been hacking apart dragons in Skyrim, or saving Earth in Mass Effect, Realm of the Mad God can be a very nice diversion. If you don’t like Steam, you can play on the Realm of the Mad God website, Kongregate, and probably a few other ways as well. Now let me try and get all the characters unlocked…
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