Seed, an ambitious sandbox life-simulation game from Klang Games, has entered early access, presenting players with the complex task of building a society from the ground up. The game's core concept revolves around players collaborating to share resources, develop skills, and establish a functioning community within a persistent world.
Upon starting, players create a "seedling" character and join a society. The early game, as experienced by one player, involves significant manual labor, from harvesting resources and crafting basic tools to managing personal needs like hygiene and preventing diseases such as jaundice or muscle strain, which inflict debuffs and can be fatal. Survival mechanics are central, with injuries and illness posing a constant threat. The community aspect quickly becomes apparent, with players coordinating through in-game chat to assign roles, share resources, and establish leadership. One society grew from eight initial members to eighteen, with a designated leader who helped organize tasks and ensure new members had access to necessary resources.
As players progress, the game shifts towards automation. Seed features an internal clock where one real-world day equates to one in-game year. Players can create detailed schedules for their seedlings, dictating activities from waking and socializing to crafting and resource gathering. These schedules continue even when the player is offline, allowing seedlings to autonomously perform tasks, such as farming. This automation means players can treat Seed as a secondary game, checking in periodically to observe progress and manage tasks.
A unique, albeit contentious, feature is the relationship between "cultivators" (players) and their seedlings, which appears to be an AI chatbot system. Cultivators can communicate with their seedlings via an in-game messaging app, receiving responses intended to be intelligent. However, this feature is described as rough around the edges in early access, with responses often nonsensical or overly agreeable, raising questions about its purpose and implementation. Seedlings also communicate amongst themselves in a similarly stilted manner, leading to speculation about whether it's true AI or a limited phrasebook system.
Despite its grand aspirations, Seed faces several challenges in its current early access state. The game's overall scope is limited for new players, and the moment-to-moment gameplay often mirrors that of other survival and farming simulations, which some games reportedly handle better. The game has also been criticized for its visual design, clunky character models, inconsistent movement and collision detection, and various bugs, including tasks not being completed by seedlings as scheduled. Developers have stated long-term goals of simulating an entire planet's society, complete with established laws and pre-built societies for new players to join, bypassing the initial survival crafting phase. However, skepticism remains regarding the game's potential to reach these ambitious milestones. The developers have acknowledged the long development time, citing the complexity of maintaining a persistent world with many active characters, and anticipate further content and bug fixes over time. Nevertheless, the game is seen by some as a late attempt at a metaverse concept, with concerns about player retention and the long-term sustainability of automated communities if players eventually abandon the game.