Old-school MMO Project: Gorgon launches into 1.0 with an update that adds 'by far the largest and most complex map we've ever made'

The children yearn for the grind. Between projects like World of Warcraft: Classic and Old School RuneScape, alongside new games like Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen there's clearly a hankering among MMO players for traditional online experiences. Now, players looking to get hopelessly lost in a lo-fi fantasy world before getting kerb-stomped by a level 4 skeleton can add Project: Gorgon to their lists, as the classically styled MMO just released out of Steam early access.

Project: Gorgon is an MMO that harks back to the primordial days of the genre, with simple 3D visuals and a minimally-guided levelling experience that lets you figure out where to go and what to do all by yourself (or with a party of pals, this being an MMO). But Project: Gorgon doesn't solely riff on the rules of the past. It has ideas of its own, such as an NPC relationship system and dynamic environmental systems that let players solve problems like being set on fire by jumping into a lake.

Its main attraction though, is a deep, open-ended skill system that enables players to tailor their approach to combat. Potential avenues to explore include a grapple-based unarmed combat system, necromancy that lets you raise corpses you find in the world to serve as your minions (including your dead friends) and a "battle chemistry" system that lets you inject yourself with mutagens or create your own pet golem.

Already fully functional as a game, Project: Golem's 1.0 update mainly introduces a massive new area you explore—the capital city of Statehelm. A hub for max-level players, Statehelm adds 200 new quests for players to pursue and facilitates character progression up to level 100.

Developer Elder Game describes Statehelm as "by far the largest and most complex map we've ever made" and says it will serve as a hub for max level players and a "jumping-off point for a bunch of new content that'll be coming in the coming months", so you can expect plenty of post-release updates from the developers, in classic MMO style.

Alongside Statehelm, the launch update brings new character models to enable richer customisation, changes to the way players earn combat wisdom (a specific type of spendable XP), the addition of "crafting epiphanies" which gives master craftsmen a random chance to gain extra combat wisdom and powerful crafting buffs, and some highly specific economy tweaks to player-run vendor stalls in the town of Serbule.

Oh, and there's a bunch of smaller updates too, including the intriguing changelog "skeletons are no longer contortionists." I don't understand what that means, but I sensed it was important to share.

If you're intrigued by Project: Gorgon but wary of its old-school nature, there's a generous demo that lets players progress through the game up to level 15. Elder Games is also running a 25% launch sale that brings the price down to $18.74 (£15.74). Project: Discount ends on February 4.