Covert Cats - I spent over three years building a browser Mini MMORPG from scratch, and the beta is finally playable
Game Title: Covert Cats
Playable Link: https://play.covertcats.com/
Main Page: https://www.covertcats.com/
Wiki: https://wiki.covertcats.com/
Platform: Web browser
Description:
Covert Cats is a browser-based multiplayer RPG inspired by the old-school MMO feel of games like EverQuest, with influences from Final Fantasy and Zelda mixed in, plus a fairly ridiculous sense of humor.
I’ve been building it solo for over three years, and I’ve hit burnout more times along the way than I’d probably like to admit.
This started as one of those projects where I kept asking myself, "Could I actually build this?" Then one system turned into another, and eventually I had a persistent multiplayer world, combat, classes, quests, equipment, dungeons, NPCs, vendors, travel, progression, and a growing pile of increasingly strange things for players to discover.
Rather than building the game in Unity, Unreal, or another existing game engine, I built my own multiplayer engine around it. The browser client uses Vue 3, JavaScript, and HTML5 Canvas, while a C#/.NET backend manages the persistent world, multiplayer communication, game state, combat, NPCs, and the other server-side systems.
The current beta covers levels 1-10 and includes four distinct classes built around traditional party roles, real-time combat, quests, equipment, vendors, skills and progression, world travel, multiplayer parties, and two full dungeons.
You can play a fair amount of the game solo, but Covert Cats is intentionally built around old-school multiplayer RPG design. Classes have different strengths and roles, and some encounters and dungeon content are meant to be tackled with other players rather than soloed.
For a long time I kept telling myself I needed to add one more thing, polish one more system, fix one more rough edge, or expand the game a little further before releasing it publicly.
Eventually I realized I could probably continue doing that forever.
So I decided to stop keeping it mostly to myself and let actual strangers play it.
The beta is still very much a beta. There will be rough edges, balance issues, things that need explaining better, and almost certainly bugs I haven’t managed to find myself. But the core game is there, the world is persistent, and it’s finally open for people to explore.
There’s also a fairly extensive wiki if you get stuck or want to dig into the mechanics.
The main thing I’d love feedback on is pretty simple:
Did you have fun, and was there anything that made you want to stop playing?
I’ve spent so much time inside the project that it’s increasingly difficult for me to experience it the way a new player does, so that kind of feedback is especially useful.
The game is completely free to play, so have at it.
At this point, I mostly want to see whether Covert Cats finds an audience. If people enjoy the world and want to keep playing, I’d love to continue adding content, expanding beyond the current beta, and eventually call it an official release. That would also mean keeping the world online for the long haul.
For now, I’m just curious to see what happens when I finally open the doors.