Mainframe industries, known for its developers from EVE Online, announced their first game called Pax Dei. Mainframe Industries describes themselves as ”an independent, venture-backed game developer”. The team makes up of veteran developers from CCP, Next Games, Blizzard Entertainment, Ubisoft, and Remedy. They describe their game as a “social sandbox MMO inspired by the legends of the medieval era”.
Mainframe CEO Thor Gunnarsson describes Pax Dei by stating, “This is a social sandbox game. It is designed with human interaction and social play at its heart, and we are aiming to offer some new and innovative ways for our players to come together with friends — and then hopefully some enemies — along the way.”
Pax Dei is an MMORPG that has very similar features to games like Rust but developed on Unreal Engine 5. Gunnarsson continues, “Being an MMORPG, harvesting and crafting are core pillars of the experience in the game. But in our world, the weapons, the armor, the construction pieces needed for your village, these are all items that are crafted and manufactured by the players themselves. So essentially, all of the things that you can gain access to in the world have been produced by someone else in the game.”
Similarly, the game is heavily based on wilderness exploration. Players will begin in an area called the Heartlands. According to Gunnarsson, this is a safe zone for players to build with a small clan and craft. Gunnarsson continues, “When it comes to venturing from the Heartlands, really the next area is the Wilderness. This is where darkness leads to more dangerous encounters. Mysteries are interspersed throughout the world, and you begin to unveil the ancient lore of the world — its wondrous past — really through what we call sort of internally ‘indirect mysteries.”
Developers at Mainframe Industries hope for Pax Dei to be a “cloud-based experience” after the initial launch on Steam. Over time, developers hope to include Pax Dei on console and mobile devices. As of now, there is no official release date. However, the game will be going into Alpha testing in the near future, according to Gunnarsson. The developers encourage players to sign up for Alpha tests on their website.