Project Wasteland Story, Lore & Gameplay Impressions

Project Wasteland: The Mythiclands

Released October 19, 2019

Available on Steam

You enter the world as a villager who managed to escape a widespread plague to a small pocket universe that lacks sufficient resources for survival. You must venture into the lands of your former home to find supplies to rebuild. Numerous monsters and the occasional violent player make gathering supplies quite difficult. The game has a main questline consisting of over 20 sub-quests, 13 pages of a farmer’s log to gather, a bestiary log to complete of over 50 different creatures, and numerous structures to build in the pocket universe — including an achievement hall. It would likely take a skilled gamer at least 15 hours to complete all of the content and a lesser skilled one closer to 20 to 30 hours. The world is open and moderately-sized, with a variety of biomes and structures to discover. Curb your expectations a bit — it is a single developer game. If you’re willing to look past some quirks, odd design choices, and the occasional bug — it’s definitely worth the price of admission.

What fascinates me most about covering obscure, lesser-known, and older MMOs and related virtual world titles is the community. While the communities lack the population figures of the big dogs like FF14, WoW, RuneScape, and others — the communities tend to be very close-knit. Contacting the developer of the lower population, obscure MMOs is typically quite easy. My story in Project Wasteland is two-fold: a story about my adventures through this unique world and making a pretty cool Discord pal — the developer. The odds are stacked against both the villager and the developer, yet both persevere. The villager sought to rid his plague-ridden former home of powerful, corrupted creatures while the developer seeks to contribute a significant artistic work in a genre of games full of reskins, unfinished early alpha projects, predatory cash shops, and other muck. The villager is to the developer as the corruption is to the MMO market muck.

Now it’s time for the spoiler warning! If you haven’t played this game yet — buy it on Steam. It’s only 99 cents currently. It’s definitely worth the price of admission. At the time of writing this, I’ve yet to complete the final quest — so I won’t spoil the ending! I will spoil the rest of the adventure, though.

Let’s start by discussing the story of the farmer, whose logs you collect as you progress through the game. We’ll call the farmer “Farmer” for simplicity’s sake. Farmer initially noticed signs of the spreading corruption through observing the increase in the population of slimes, including some quite large, powerful slimes. Seeking to resolve the slime invasion, he took his shovel and eradicated his fields of all of them. A neighboring farmer noticed his success and hired him to clear out his field as well — starting a career change from farmer to mercenary.

Farming wasn’t a viable career as the corruption spread. It’s unclear whether Farmer was driven by greed or pragmatic necessity, but he found an opportunity to thrive as a mercenary. The second paid job Farmer took on involved killing wolves, including one quite large, infamous wolf who was responsible for killing someone’s loved one. Farmer took his payment, traveled to another town, and spent quite at the local taverns. Out of money, Farmer dug through barrels and other refuse for food and other items.

While hanging out at a tavern in the southern region, Farmer overheard a woman getting mugged. It’s unclear by his diary whether or not this woman was murdered or only had items stolen from her, but it was clear that Farmer saw an opportunity to turn around his dire financial situation. Seeking to maximize his payment, he did not attempt to rescue the woman who was mugged. He did get a glimpse of the perpetrator. Farmer hung out at the tavern until the husband came in. The husband paid Farmer half of the money he had set aside to purchase an additional land plot as a down payment to get vengeance against the mugger, with the other half payable upon job completion. Farmer skipped town with the down payment and figured he wouldn’t actually do the job.

It’s strange how small the world can seem at times. In the case of Farmer, he ended up running into the mugger as soon as he entered the next town over from where the woman was mugged. The Mugger sought to sell him powerful potions and other contraband. Farmer and Mugger went behind a nearby church. Farmer faked a limp and portrayed himself as being quite weak and disabled. When they went behind the church, Farmer utilized the opportunity to take out this mugger, returning to the husband for the remainder of his payment. The husband was overjoyed, buying a drink and paying the remaining gold to Farmer.

Farmer heard stories of powerful items for sale in the desert region and decided to seek these out. During his travels, he came across a group of demons encircling a giant demon — performing some sort of archaic ritual. After 5 minutes, the giant demon was forced through the portal and the demons scattered. Farmer was unsuccessful in tracking down any of the demons after the ritual and waited on nearby path — contemplating what to do next.

An old mage walked by and Farmer relayed what he observed regarding the ritual. The pair went to the site of the portal and observed a haze seeping out of the portal. The old mage commented that the haze was corruption from a defeated future and he lacked any solution to the issue. The lands would be engulfed in the coming days, becoming uninhabitable to non-corrupted humans. The old mage and Farmer went to the mage’s cottage, where the mage discussed how Farmer could take a portal to a pocket universe for safety.

The Farmer is a morally ambiguous character, often acting in a highly pragmatic, possibly self-interested manner. It’s unclear if the Farmer had a gut feeling about some impending doom and went into base survival mode. While it’s easy to criticize the farmer for his actions, it’s unclear how you, me, or anyone will act when facing such a frightening, hopeless scenario. The farmer was not a good character, nor was he purely evil. He was simply human, acting occasionally in a highly self-interested way until it became increasingly clear how serious the situation had become. He became quite selfless then, willing to fight demons and work with an old mage with no expectation of payment.

And now we’re to the point where the player character begins their adventure. I’ve yet to complete the very final sub-quest of the main quest-line, so I won’t be discussing the entirety of the game. I will be discussing the rest of the adventure, though.

The quest-line begins with a few sub-quests relating to basic gathering and crafting, resulting in the creation of a bronze sword. You’ll quickly want to ditch this sword but it’s definitely serviceable for early content. Having the tutorial integrated in the story and main quest-line is definitely something I prefer, given it helps with immersion. One of the first things you’ll notice is that all of the early, helpful NPCs are ghosts — perhaps spirits of previous residents who were unable to escape the haze of corruption.

After getting your first sword, you’ll be sent on a quest to gather a lunchbox from a nearby Crypt — the first dungeon you’ll likely experience in the game. While gathering a lunchbox from an undead infested crypt seems like a ludicrous task — it at least attempts to retain story and gameplay integration. After gathering the lunchbox, you’ll be asked to return it to an NPC near Permafrost Village — your first adventure outside of the grasslands to a new biome.

It’s unclear who or what the Frozen Knights are exactly. You’ll come across them in the first open world castle sub-quest in the main quest-line. Perhaps these are knights that have succombed to the corruptive force? Regardless, the castles are fairly well-paced for a new player, with appropriate difficulty scaling and sufficient space between each knight to be able to pull individual ones or gather a few up together to kill multiple at once. It’s even possible to use stealth and parkour to bypass many of the lesser knights and go straight to the boss. Mobs tend to follow rather predictable paths and often don’t attack despite being within a range where they should be able to see you. That’s common in a lot of MMOs, though. I’m willing to set aside this nitpick given a wider aggro range would likely make this game quite a bit more frustrating — and less fun as a result.

From this point on, you’ll discover the remainder of the sentient beings in the game. Besides the ghosts and frozen knights, there are orcs and goblins who inhabit quite well-designed villages, wraiths and demons, and other creatures who likely lack sentience. Specific creatures tend to inhabit their preferred biomes, and the biomes they inhabit tend to reflect their names or what you’d expect from real life analogues to these creatures.

Project Wasteland is an interesting attempt at creating a unique game by a single developer. The game mostly left me wondering what this developer could accomplish if he had a full team to work on this game. The combat is rather basic, the UI looks a bit amateurish, yet the world itself — despite using Unity store assets — is quite coherent and consistent. The buildings all touch the ground appropriately — an issue I’ve found in projects developed by companies with significant funding and fully-staffed teams. This game is unlikely to become your MMO of choice but it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s unclear what the future of this project will be, but it’s clear that the developer has talent when it comes to game design. Hopefully either this project or future ventures by the developer are successful.