Realm of the Mad God
Realm of the Mad God is a massively multiplayer online shoot 'em up video game created by Wild Shadow Studios and currently owned and developed by DECA Games. It was in public beta from January 2010 and the browser version launched on June 20, 2011. On February 20, 2012 the game was made available on the digital distribution platform Steam for Microsoft Windows and OS X.
The game has been described as a "massively-multiplayer cooperative bullet hell shooter" with an 8-bit pixelated art style. Players control characters who have been transported to the realm of Oryx to become food for his many minions and abominations, which the players must dispatch. Central to the design of the game is the fact that character death is permanent. Upon death, the player's character is lost along with all of its carried equipment, although the player can store a number of items for safekeeping in a limited-capacity vault away from danger. Different character choices in class also help make the game more diverse and help to support teamwork.
The game is free-to-play with optional in-game micro-transactions. Items that can be bought with optional transactions vary from high-level equipment, pets that provide aid to the player, increased storage space, and a variety of aesthetic features such as skins, clothes, and dyes.
Wild Shadow Studios was acquired by Kabam in June 2012 and obtained Realm of the Mad God in the acquisition. Kabam maintained the game until July 2016, when they sold it to DECA Games.
This game client was originally written in Flash and could be played in-browser on the official site, on Kongregate, or could be downloaded from Steam. Due to the discontinuation of Adobe Flash Support by 2020, it was announced on June 12, 2018, that a remastered version of the client built using the Unity game engine was under development, which was first released to the public through an Open Beta on April 15, 2020, and was officially released as Realm of the Mad God Exalt on July 22, 2020.
Gameplay
The HUD on the right-hand side displays a mini-map of the player's current server as well as the current character's statistics and inventory. The mini-map of the realm is initially blank, but areas can be revealed as a player traverses through the map. Player and NPC chat appears in the lower left corner of the screen.The game consists of players firing projectiles and destroying enemies to earn experience, fame, and better equipment. A character moves around using the WASD keys and uses the mouse to aim and shoot. Contrary to usual practice in MMOs, the experience for killing monsters is awarded fully to each player present, rather than divided. Because of this, it is generally advantageous for players to group up. Players are able to instantly teleport to any other player on the map under a cooldown of 10 seconds. In addition, players are able to escape to the safety of the Nexus, a safe area where characters can't be killed, at the push of a button.
Players begin their game sessions in the Nexus. The Nexus consists of multiple sections featuring, among other things: a marketplace, healing fountains, and portals to enter realms. The marketplace is scattered across the central Nexus and players commonly use this area to trade with other players as well as purchase items being sold in the Nexus using Realm Gold. Occasionally, packages may appear in the Nexus that can be purchased with Fame rather than Realm Gold. North of the marketplace is a large room that contains multiple portals leading to the "realms". Each of these realms is named after powerful monsters in the game. The capacity of each realm is 85 people at once, and a full realm cannot be entered until a player in it dies or leaves.
During gameplay, the player is directed to "quest" monsters which are indicated by a red marker at the edge of the game window. As their character levels up in the realm, they are guided from the "Beaches" and "Lowlands" areas at the edges of the map, through the "Midlands" and "Highlands," and to the more difficult "Mountains" in the center of the map. The Mountains host powerful monsters known as "Gods", which are significantly stronger than the other foes in the Realm but also provide more experience and better loot. Defeating certain quest enemies allows more powerful "event" bosses to spawn, which are unique and often once-per-realm bosses that can be killed to obtain higher-tier loot and open portals to rare dungeons.
Once all of the quest heroes and event bosses in a realm are defeated, the realm is closed and players can no longer enter the Realm from the Nexus. After a delay, players are then teleported to Oryx's Castle, a high-level dungeon where they take down his minions and make their way into the castle. After a confrontation with the castle guardians, players can face off against Oryx himself in his chamber. Oryx's Castle also contains an alternative encounter that triggers when a specific condition is met, granting the players that choose this option over Oryx to fight a special boss and access several unique boss-only dungeons.
Oryx has three, increasingly powerful forms. When Oryx's first form is defeated in his chamber, he drops a locked portal to the Wine Cellar, where his second form resides. The portal can only be unlocked if one of the players surviving the first Oryx fight happens to have an "incantation" that unlocks the Wine Cellar, which drops from various enemies throughout the game. Upon being unlocked, the players can storm the Mad God's heavily guarded Wine Cellar and face the true Oryx, who is significantly stronger than his previous incarnation and wields a completely new set of attacks.
The rewards of the Oryx boss fights are a large amount of fame and some rare and useful equipment. After Oryx's second form is defeated, players possessing three special rune items can use them to reveal the portal to Oryx's Sanctuary, the most difficult area in the game as of July 2020. In the Sanctuary, players can encounter Oryx's third and most powerful form, which drops some of the most powerful items in the game.
Mechanics
Classes
Realm of the Mad God offers 18 playable classes, each with their own unique ability. These classes are: Wizard, Rogue, Archer, Priest, Warrior, Knight, Paladin, Assassin, Necromancer, Huntress, Mystic, Trickster, Sorcerer, Ninja, Samurai, Bard, Summoner, and Kensei. Each class wears one of three armor types and uses one of six weapon types. Each weapon has an alternate type which behaves differently than the base weapon, altering the play style of that class. Depending on the class or item equipped, abilities can deal damage, inflict debuffs on enemies, buff or heal allies, or otherwise perform a defensive function. Players starting off will have access to the Wizard, or both Wizard and Rogue if playing through Steam. Players unlock other classes by leveling up or reaching level 20 with previously unlocked classes.Items
Items are generally classified into tiers, with higher-tier items having better stats. Some items are not classified by tier and are thus either given an "untiered" designation, or a "set tiered" designation if they are part of an item set. Item examples include weapons, armor, rings, abilities, limited-use items, and April Fools' Day counterparts.Loot Bags
Almost every enemy in the game can drop loot bags, which can contain potions, items, or cosmetics. Loot bags are split into different tiers, which affect their appearance and what items they can contain. There are ten tiers of bags in the game : brown, pink, purple, egg baskets, cyan, blue, golden, orange, red, and white. Brown and pink bags often contain potions of health or mana as well as lower tier gear, and can be seen by everyone when dropped. Every tier of bag from purple onwards are "soulbound" and will only been seen by the player for whom it dropped. Many items, such as stat potions and most equipment, can be traded to other players, even if they were originally dropped in a soulbound bag. The rarest items tend to drop in white bags and are frequently referred to in the community as "white bag items" or "whites". Many of these white bag items can completely change the way a class is played and are highly sought after by players.Dungeons
One major gameplay element is dungeon crawling. In realms, dungeons may drop from certain enemies or event bosses that players can enter to fight a themed boss and its minions. Most dungeons are generated with a random layout, so they will have a different layout with every visit. The difficulty of each dungeon is determined by a 1-10 ranking system represented by tombstones, which can be viewed by hovering the mouse on the dungeon in the hud. Dungeons with 10 tombstones are known to be the most challenging dungeons in the game, while dungeons with 2 or fewer tombstones can be completed with ease.Most mid-to-high-level dungeons will provide the player with stat boost potions, some even guaranteeing such potions in certain conditions. The dungeon monsters also have a chance to drop equipment for the player. In addition to these drops, dungeon bosses typically provide the player with a small possibility of obtaining white bag items that cannot be found anywhere else. Some of these rare items may prove more useful to the player depending on their preferences or the type of item.
Stats and Potions
Once a character reaches level 20, players focus on obtaining potions that permanently increase the stats of the character that consumes. Players are able to work towards maxing eight stats: Dexterity, Speed, Wisdom, Vitality, Attack, Defense, Mana, and Life. When consumed, potions will increase the character's stat by one point. Stat potions can drop from gods in the godlands, from event bosses, and from dungeon bosses. The difficulty of the dungeon often corresponds with how valued the stat potions that can drop from it are; Speed, a relatively easy stat to max, is easy to obtain, while Life, the hardest stat to max, drops from the harder dungeons in the game. Harder dungeons may also drop Greater Stat Potions, which increase the stat value by two instead of one.Every class in the game each has unique max values for each stat as well as average levels for each stat upon reaching level 20, meaning that it can take up to consuming 40 potions of a particular stat on one class, and around 10 of the same stat on another. It is common terminology in game to refer to a person who has increased all stats to their maximum value as 8/8, and conversely, a player who does not have any of their stats maxed is 0/8. The quality of the character's gravestone corresponds to the amount of stats they had maxed at the moment they had died.