Brighter Shores
Brighter Shores is an upcoming game developed by Fen Research and designed by Andrew Gower. It will be released in November 2024, and will be available for Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel chipsets). The game is free-to-play, but players can access additional features and content by purchasing the Premium Pass.
Brighter Shores features an ongoing story with hundreds of hours of gameplay.[1] New content is released in the game in an episodic format. Players start their journey in Hopeport, as a member of the town guard.
History
The game has been under development since September 2016, but some assests were taken from Fen Research scrapped 'Chasm Game'[2] and was announced officially on 13 March 2024. An initial two-minute trailer was released, which depicts players engaging in combat, several professions, and a variety of different locations.[3]
Part of the reason that Brighter Shores took a long time to develop is because Gower decided to create a new game engine from scratch, as opposed to using a popular engine like Unreal Engine or Unity.[4] He had previously created his own engine for his previous MMORPG RuneScape in the early 2000s, programmed in Java. The engine that Gower built is called Fenforge, and had previously been used by at least two games prior to being used for Brighter Shores. Gower has said that active development on Brighter Shores officially started in 2017.[4]
A closed beta is planned in 2024 prior to the release of the game.[5]
Trivia
- The logo of Brighter Shores features Hopeport Obelisk.
- Fen Research might have first wanted Brighter Shores to be named "Wondrous Shores", judging by the trademark filings on 11 January 2024[6] and 15 January 2024[7].