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Ruboria, a real-time MMO coming to Steam

Ruboria is a persistent MMO coming to Steam. You start in Gatehold with a Starter Pickaxe and no permit. Mine, haul freight, unclog drains and file paperwork until the Registry lets you build a crossing or reverse a drain. Whatever you change, everyone else has to live with.

Status: closed alphaInvites: closed for now

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Z04 Mycori Hollow, Glowgrove, Adventure Layer, at night: a green forest of tiles with ponds and purple spore patches, a player tagged Architect, a banner reading Spore Pressure Release: 0/10 fixed, and a panel showing Friction Here, Social Resonance, Ripple Credit, Census Frictionless Notary and Standing Co-signatory of the Charter
Z04 Mycori Hollow, the Glowgrove. Spore Pressure Release: 0/10 fixed. The Census has me down as a Frictionless Notary.
Bulletin, The October design update is in. It covers freight, Escorting and Haulage, the Codex of Firsts, the Registry of Exceptions and the long-term plan for player-run cities.

Target the ground, not a hitbox.

Fights happen in real time on a tilted 2.5D tile board, and you keep moving the whole time, any direction you like. Each tool covers a shape of tiles. Load an element, aim that shape at the ground and cast. Every tile it covers takes the effect. No 14-button rotations.

  • Squeegeea line of four
  • Pry-Bladea T
  • Trench Shovela 2x2
  • Ladlethrows a plus
Volt cast wet tile, charged Firebreak Seal wet tile, past the seal
  1. Put Aqua down. Those tiles are now [Aqueous].
  2. Cast Volt next to them. The charge runs through every connected wet tile, up to 32.
  3. A rubber mat or a Firebreak Seal stops it cold.
  4. Ignis on the same water gives you a cloud of steam.

The game's own advice on Volt: "stand somewhere dry." Your healer will learn this the hard way.

A cast adds tags to the tiles it covers: [Aqueous] [Conductive] [Brittle] [Flammable] [Insulated]. Verbs only work on the right tags, so you can only Shatter what's [Brittle].

The preview snaps to the tiles before you cast, and R rotates it. Gridcast is the fighting stance; hold Alt for a quick switch. Every verb you use advances a Census domain, and one of the twelve is Mino Casting.

Gridcasting Basics tutorial, step 2 of 3, Aim and Cast: a player on a green tile board with an Ignis button and a highlighted Aqua button, a glowing outline on the two tiles the cast will hit, and the caption Move toward a button to light it: the glowing outline shows exactly which tiles it hits. Click to cast.
Gridcasting Basics, step 2 of 3. Walk toward a button and the outline shows exactly which tiles it will hit.

Paper beats rock (but paperwork beats everything)

You have a pulse. You do not have a permit. The city can fix one of those.

The city's opening line
Petition to the RegistryFile in person

File for a better world

Leveling up is the small stuff. Here, the world itself can be changed, and it stays changed.

  1. Petition

    Ask the Registry of Exceptions for something the ordinary rules forbid. Earn the qualifications, file the paperwork, pay for it, and wait for the approval.

  2. Build

    Bridges and posts stay built between visits. Other players route around your work or come to rely on it, and a shared bridge has upkeep, so somebody has to care whether it holds.

  3. Set precedent

    Exceptional actions come as permits and projects, bounded by scope, cost and authority and checked by the server. Surprising is allowed. A free hand to wreck the place is not.

  4. Go on record

    The Codex of Firsts keeps the names behind real novelty: mastery, authorized restoration, experimental apparatus. Being early to the usual stuff earns nothing.

How the Registry works

A normal day's work

A short visit can be a few repairs. A long one, a freight contract and a bridge.

  1. 01Gather

    Mining is a brick-breaker cabinet set into the ore. Orbalism is pinball on root-grown tables. Fishing and Forestry too.

  2. 02Haul

    Freight has a manifest, an owner and an exact location. Somebody has to walk it there.

  3. 03Fix

    Jammed stamping platforms, clogged drains. Fixing things is how the city issues you new tools.

  4. 04File

    Skill, Standing and your record qualify you for permits. A permit lets you break one ordinary rule, with your name on it.

  5. 05Help

    Repair a stranger's route or move their freight. Nobody makes you join a party.

Gathering, by cabinet

Every resource comes out of a minigame. These are the current builds of three of them.

Data Miner minigame, a brick-breaker cabinet: layered rock bands at the top with a glowing gold core, a ball and a paddle, a readout of Signals 4, Time 78 s and Charge 2 of 18, and instructions to break through to the gold core data
Data Miner. The prize is the gold core sealed in the rock. Walking away mid-run counts as a loss.
Mossroot Table, the Orbalism pinball minigame: a wooden table with three orange spore bumpers, green leaves, flippers and a ball, a readout of Orbs 4, Bloom 1, Pods 2 and Time 166 s, and instructions to tap pale spore pods gently
Mossroot Table, the new look for Orbalism. The instructions ask you to tap pale spore pods gently.
Fishing minigame after a miss: a result card reads No Haul, They all got away, The fish are talking about you, plus 0 Fishing XP at level 3 and Fractured for 102 s, thinner mining yields, above instructions to wait for the float to dip and strike
After pinball herbalism and brick-breaker mining, well, fishing is just fishing. This one ended in No Haul. The fish are talking about you.

Evidence from the current build

A fixed-angle 2.5D board of faceted tiles floating on navy.

A player holding a hammer stands on open grass between wooden cranes in Quarrycamp, with the nameplate of Ozzybronze the Unburied at the right edge
Exhibit A. By the Quarrycamp cranes, standing wherever I stopped walking. Ozzybronze the Unburied waits on the boardwalk.
Sludge Mohawk, a skate park regular, complaining in a dialogue box that the Registry wants a permit for every ollie and asking who audits the auditors
Exhibit B. Sludge Mohawk would like to know who audits the auditors.
Two permit sheets on file in the Registry, with their requirements and restrictions spelled out
Exhibit C. Permits on file. Each one lists what it allows and what it costs you.
A player on a wooden boardwalk over a pond with ducks and frogs, above the Compost and Audit actions and the Ignis, Aqua, Volt and Seal ability bar
Exhibit D. The pond boardwalk. Compost and Audit are both verbs.
Sludge Mohawk in a blue mohawk and jacket beside Ms. Mac in a yellow outfit and red hood, in front of a brick wall
Exhibit E. Sludge Mohawk and Ms. Mac.
A low-poly player next to Orbalist Fenna Rootwhistle, who wears a green frog hood, beside an Orbalism station
Exhibit F. Orbalist Fenna Rootwhistle.
Z01 Overwalk Gate, The Stackmaster: falling block pieces stacked on a stone tile board at night, a player standing beside them, and a status bar reading Stackmaster, Overture, Hull 100%, Lines 0, Heat 0
Exhibit G. The Stackmaster at Overwalk Gate. You stand on the board while the pieces come down.
Z03 Frogleap Fen, Siltbell Warden, The Drowned Chime: a player under a huge bronze bell hung between two stone towers, on a grey tile board ringed by pine trees at night
Exhibit H. Siltbell Warden, the Drowned Chime, in Frogleap Fen.

Latest from the devlog

Log entry 5, filed Almost testing A limited closed alpha is close, with smaller stress tests and system tests before it. No date. Invites go out through the email list. Read the devlog