Games like Realm of the Mad God, in your browser

Realm of the Mad God started life as a browser game you could drop into with strangers for ten minutes of chaos. If you miss that, here is an honest look at Averse Lands, a free 3D MMORPG that runs in a browser tab, and the big ways it is not the same kind of game.

What Realm of the Mad God does

Realm of the Mad God is a free co-op shooter MMO in pixel art: a top-down bullet hell where everyone on screen fights the same monsters, gear drops in loot bags, and a dead character is gone for good. It began in the browser and today plays through its own downloaded client, Exalt. Runs are short, deaths are sudden, and the fun is in dodging and in loot.

What Averse Lands has in common

It runs in a browser tab. No client or launcher: sign in and play in Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
Fighting alongside strangers. Everyone shares one world. Group up in a party of up to five, or find one with the Group Finder (O), and take on three dungeons built for two to five players, each with a boss.
Loot sacks. What a monster drops falls in a sack where it dies. In a party, the better drops go to Need and Greed rolls and the rest lands in one sack for the party.
Fighting from range. Bows, crossbows and thrown javelins hit from a distance, and three schools of magic cast from afar. At the moment you can swing and shoot while you move.
It is free, and there is nothing to buy in the beta.

A party of five fighting a pack of Scale Raptors on the yellow grass of the Amber Plains, an archer and a mage on the flanks, one raptor already down beside its loot sack — **A Scale Raptor pack on the Amber Plains** · five players of level 19 to 22, one raptor already down. On the High graphics setting. Staged in the local test game with test characters, each at a level, in gear and with a standing a real character could have.

What is very different

It is not a bullet hell. You click a monster and your character fights it; skill is in choosing your fights, your weapon and when to drink a potion, not in dodging hundreds of shots.
No permadeath. When you fall you choose: revive where you fell for a share of your progress, or go back to town and maybe leave one worn piece and one bag slot behind. Your character stays.
No classes. You pick a starting weapon and grow by using it. Each weapon family has its own skill, listed in the skills database.
Slower and longer. Characters grow over days and weeks, not one run. The experience table runs from level 1 to 111.
Players can fight each other. From level 8, outside towns, anyone in the PvP stance may attack you. The open PvP guide has the rules.
3D rather than pixel art, with a camera you zoom.

Who should not bother

If you want dodging and twitch reflexes, Averse Lands will feel slow.
If permadeath is the point, there is none here.
If you want a busy world today. It is a young game in a small beta.

If what you miss is dropping into a browser tab and hunting with whoever is around, it is worth a try. The no-download guide covers what your computer needs.

Averse Lands is in a small, free beta. Apply with Discord and we read every application ourselves.

Apply for the beta