I had the pleasure of getting to partake in the Beta for Loftia, a cozy online multiplayer game where you have both personal goals, and those which you can work on with the greater community, so you can choose how you play.
In typical MMO style, players have the opportunity to interact with one another, which gives you the opportunity to make friends and have conversations, or help each other out. There are also community missions that involve donating resources or doing a certain amount of one activity or another that collectively builds towards a goal that benefits the whole community.
But beyond this, it also allows you to play solo if that is your preference. The Beta content basically consists of the game tutorial so to speak, with the player accomplishing goals that introduce them to the world of Loftia, and the actitives that one can go about while they take part in this world. You learn how to farm, cook, fish, craft objects/furniture and clothes, mining, foraging, decorate your home, and generally just explore the world and gather resources needed to craft items needed to further your progress. It also allows the opportunity to get to know some of the main NPCs that you will spend your time interacting with to do quests for and otherwise learn the various crafts.
For a game in Beta, I was super impressed with the quality and the content available. There were minor bugs experienced during gameplay – for myself mainly just the odd stuttering with the character movement being set back a bit when I was moving around (ie. I would move in a direction and suddenly find myself back a few paces where I started). And the first time I attempted character creation was a bit buggy where the screen was offset all the way to the bottom so I couldn’t really see the character I was creating. Again, minor, and nothing that impeded my playtime significantly.
There was also quite a bit of content available for such an early iteration of the game. I believe I put in just over 10 hours which was solely learning the gameplay and doing the quests available to the completion of the available story. As someone who has played a number of Early Access games over recent years, I feel like this was a good amount for a Beta game, and honestly much better quality than a lot of Early Access games end up being any more. And I was so drawn into the game right from the start. I was immersed in the game immediately and absolutely blew through the story and the quests because I was so invested in the game and was surprised by the amount of time I put into it because the time passed so quickly. Once I got started I had a hard time stopping until I reached the end of the available story which always makes for a good game.
My takeaway from the Closed Beta is that this is a game that I am looking forward to even more now, and I cannot wait until the full version is available as I am ready to jump back into the world of Loftia and completing quests while finding out more of the story. I will definitely be playing more of this when it is available.
