Genesis Online

Genesis Online Review

By Chanel Hwang

Just go play Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, or Don't Starve. Seriously. Those are four great options that will save you from the psychological pain of this game.

Why Are You Still Reading This?

I warned you. Run.

If you're still here, then it's your loss. I suffered through many painful hours to write this review, so at least that's not wasted. Well, brace yourself! Genesis Online brought much hope and promise when I entered the loading screen. Peaceful blue skies, pretty clouds, and a tranquil background melody filled the atmosphere. Little did I know of the terror that awaited me. On the character creation screen I couldn't help but cringe (and sometimes yelp) at the limited face and hair options. At least the color choices were plentiful. As soon as I could find the least scary-looking face I fell into the game. Literally. I landed on a small turf of green grass and waited for a tutorial. Nothing happened. The pleasant music in the loading screen was no longer playing in the background and I suddenly felt very alone.

I wandered around the small green block, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I made out tiny little letters near the top of the screen ("I" and "Q"), which allowed me to open my inventory and finally figure out how to start the tutorial quests—PRESS Q.

The tutorials aren't too shabby, at first. The kind lady told me that the green little square was my home, told me how to travel to different biomes, and told me she loved me. LIES. All joking aside though, the tutorial bugged out on me after the first five steps and I was stuck. I kept going back to the quest screen and repeatedly did what it asked of me, but it wouldn't progress. Then the Daily Log In Bonus went nuts and gave me all ten log-in bonuses, when it was only supposed to give me one. There were so many bugs right off the bat and I thought I had seem them all, yet little did I know that it wasn't going to end there.

Exploring the Biomes for Resources

I entered the forest biome first, in search of trees. To this day, I still have not found trees. There these strange leaf blocks that float in the sky that drop wood, but no trees. All the biomes actually look the same: pyramid scheme of terrain with a dirt hut on the top that leads to a cave of stone. The snowy biomes look exactly like the desert biomes, except one is white and the other is sandy. There are several different maps of each biome and, supposedly, up to 64 players can play at the same time. The most people I ever encountered was four, and even then there was so much lag that they were statues in my game. The maps are ridiculously small and don't offer any cool structures. Oh, and an important note, you can't build anything on the biome maps. The only place you can place blocks is on your private home map.

Gathering resources is like trying to catch Totodile in Pokemon Red—impossible. I spent an hour digging for resources, and I only got one piece of copper and one piece of iron. The rest? Stone and coal. You can easily create things in the stone tier, but anything beyond that is impractical, unless you're willing to spend money on the game. Also, how do you craft things? If you ever find out, please let me know. I had to resort to sticking stone into the Wonder Furnace and hitting the craft button, hoping that RNG would be merciful. There was no system, other than one-time-use "recipes" that could be bought with in-game currency. Legend has it that you can craft weapons, like swords, but I have yet to discover such tech.

Dungeons...?

Pressing "T" brings up a map. In the top right-hand corner there is an itty bitty star that you can click to enter the dungeons. There are no signs or labels to indicate that this is where you go to loot the dungeons. As soon as you enter, you're stuck in a room with a stone door that is closed. It won't open until three players are inside the room. I had to wait twenty minutes for two people to join me. As soon as the door opened the game tells you there are 60 goblins. We all ran inside and were massacred by the very first goblin. We only had pickaxes. Even if I wanted to create armor and a sword, I had no idea where to even start. I think the developers of Genesis Online decided to stick in this "dungeon crawler" feature to make the game an "action/adventure" sandbox, rather than just a "sandbox" game. And the battle system is incomplete—there are no indications of how much damage is dealt nor how much health the enemy has remaining. I think food can be consumed to increase your health, but my health bar would fluctuate between 80 health and 50 health, and sometimes wouldn't even appear.

Other Features

Um... Other features, right... There are emotes? That are super creepy-sounding? And there's no music in the actual game. There are some sound effects, like when you mine resources or jump in water, but they turn on and off randomly. There is also a very well-made item mall, where you can purchase items for a home instead of crafting them. Oh, did I also mention you can farm? I threw some wheat seeds on the ground, but then my tutorial quests bugged, so I don't know what happens after that. My farm has been stuck for the last two days now. There is also a trading system, where you can buy other players' crops and resources. But finding actual players might be difficult, as the playerbase is exceptionally low.

Final Verdict – Poor

One of the Steam tags for this game is "psychological horror," an appropriate tag if one had to play through this game in its entirety. Don't get me wrong! If this game was created and shared for fun, and not for profit, I think the holes and bugs are understandable. But because the developers created an item mall that runs more smoothly than any other part of the game, it is obviously for profit. Anything you could want from this game you can find in a more complete, polished, and actually playable form through titles, such as Minecraft or Terraria. If you're looking for a new MMO, this one is an MM-No.

Genesis Online Screenshots

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Genesis Online Videos

Coming Soon!

Genesis Online Links

Genesis Online Steam Page

Genesis Online System Requirements

Minimum Requirements (Windows):

Operating System: Windows XP, 7
CPU: Pentium 4 2000 MHz
RAM: 1024 MB RAM
Video Card: GeForce 5700
Hard Disk Space: 400 MB

Recommended Requirements (Windows):

Operating System: Windows 7
CPU: Core i5
RAM: 2048 MB RAM
Video Card: GeForce 250GTS
Hard Disk Space: 400 MB

Genesis Online Music & Soundtrack

Coming Soon!

Genesis Online Additional Information

Developer(s): Shumkov Dmitriy
Publisher(s): Shumkov Dmitriy

Steam Release Date: November 05, 2015

Development History / Background:

Genesis Online is developed and published by Shumkov Dmitriy. It is a free-to-play MMO action/adventure sandbox game that was released on Steam in 2015. The same team also developed and published Blockade 3D. The game was abandoned with no notice and no longer launches.