Early access survival MMO Pax Dei has gotten off to a mixed start on Steam, but that might be because its devs say not everything is in place yet, leaving it feeling a little more survival game and a little less MMO.
Speaking to PC Gamer, game director Reynir Hardarson says that a core idea behind Pax Dei is the ability to allow players to establish their own settlements that evolve over time; "the idea is that we'll have emergent trends, and then we'll have artisan guilds, and people will come together and will form big towns." Things like building enhancements if you settle near another player will help, and Hardarson says that eventually, "you'll have the formation of actual civilizations."
Unfortunately, when Hardarson spoke to PC Gamer, many of those tools weren't in place, which means that rather than being a full-fledged survival MMO, Pax Dei is currently "a little bit more like a survival game, because it's missing a lot of pillars."
Fortunately, Hardarson thinks that even if Pax Dei is more survival game than MMO, it's a pretty good survival game. "This now feels very much like a Valheim model survival game where you have to build everything yourself." Given its enormous success, Valheim is certainly a pretty nice survival game to be chasing, even if Hardarson didn't exactly plan for that. Eventually, the plan is that you'll be able to find your way to success via a whole host of different avenues, suggesting that the economy underwriting Pax Dei is likely to take a little while to get going.
Pax Dei did get off to a slightly shaky start last month, but it does seem to be well on its way to a decent recovery, ticking up to Mostly Positive recent reviews on Steam.
Maybe Pax Dei will eventually make it onto our list of the best survival games.
