Screeps Is A Daunting New MMORTS

You know those games that require you to actually program your own robots or other AI? The team behind Screeps made an entire MMORTS based on that concept, allowing players—scripters?—to script each unit using JavaScript, or other programming languages if desired. Putting your workforce's welfare into the hands of your programming skills is a rather daunting idea, especially when placed up against other players who may be better at programming than you are. That's not to mention everything that can probably go wrong, turning your perfect idea on its head until debugged.

And yet here it is, an MMORTS with base building, territorial warfare, logistics, and more in a persistent world setting that is filled with units programmed by players. It's an interesting idea but the business model gives me pause. The game updates in cycles and, while the single-player game is free, the multiplayer world requires you to pay for cycles. While 100 cycles per day is considered "good," you can use up to 300 per day. Using 300 per day will cost you around $30 per month. This is optional to begin with but it is a bit concerning, nonetheless. It seems that the developers really want to steer people towards using $10 worth of cycles per month, or 100 per day.

If you're interested, you can try the single-player game out at the link above. If you're not sure yet, check out the trailer embedded above.