One of the devs behind The Stanley Parable made a free MMO
Into the depths of the Internet
Indie developer Crows Crows Crows, whose founder William Pugh is one of the developers behind The Stanley Parable, has released a free browser-based MMO. It is described as "a mix between Journey, RuneScape and that time U2’s new album got auto-installed on everybody’s iPhones." The Club - a blocky 90s-Internet styled multi-player discothon whose name is surrounded by the animated GIF flames of a Geocities fan page, and whose club tracks sound like a DJ set by David Lynch - is a mission-less, non-competitive, online music listening game. It is hell. It is perfect.
"Last year, Activision Blizzard had an operating income of almost 2 billion USD," the developer announced by way of newsletter. "We at Crows Crows Crows believe we’re just as good and deserve equal success. So we have decided to do what it takes to level us up as a studio and finally finish The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe make our own MMO."
The Club features a soundtrack of over 100 original songs created by the Crows Crows Crows community using a sample pack of over 300 weird angular club beats produced by the Webby Award-winning Silkersoft. Players, who are automatically given a username of the most ludicrous, AIMbot variety, can chat using 45 pre-set phrases that cover just about anything you might say in a social scenario. For instance, there is “I know the guy who owns this place!”, or “I’m using tilt controls!”, or my personal catchphrase: "So it has come to this."
Club patrons heave themselves on to the dancefloor with the brutish indeterminacy of WASD-keys, and dance, talk, or explore any number of the three other areas - the toilets of mystery, the backstage bit, or outside where there is a tree. The dancefloor is where most of the action happens, however. A pink, womb-like discotheque of Internet nightmares. The result is like a Hieronymus Bosch painting of Hell but everything has been replaced by all the animated GIFs of hideous cartoon cats and dancing celery that have been burned into our minds eye since those early days of the web. The hell we deserve. Let your eye-holes feast upon it, and then play it for yourself:
