As the creator of RuneScape tells me about his new MMO, it sounds like a dream game for folks who want a "nice, relaxing escape" – especially RuneScape fans

RuneScape creator and Jagex founder Andrew Gower recently revealed his next MMO, Brighter Shores, which has been in the works at his new studio, Fen Research, for about 10 years. That said, it's technically seven years if you separate engine time, prototyping, and "earnest" game development.

I sat down with Gower to discuss the nature of the game, which is due Q3 2024, and readily admitted to him that I can't help but see RuneScape in Brighter Shores since it's a game I grew up with. The more details he shares, the clearer it becomes that, like RuneScape did some 23 years ago, Brighter Shores expresses Gower's core style and interests, from old-school text adventures to multi-user dungeons (MUDs) to tabletop RPGs. But the overriding theme is making "a nice, relaxing escape from reality" that doesn't overtax your brain. 

"I've always liked grid-based games," Gower says of Brighter Shores' recognizable world layout. "I've always loved point-and-click and I've always loved grid-based. So if you take those two things, they're the two things I've kept, the things I've liked in everything I've ever done. But the engine is completely different."

One key difference compared to RuneScape "is that it's not tick-based," he continues. "So everything happens much more responsively. One thing I had to build in from the absolute get-go is proper client-side prediction. So the client can predict what's going to happen without needing to wait for a response back from the server, which again just makes the whole thing a lot more responsive. That greatly increases the types of gameplay we can do. 

"There were an awful lot of things that frustrated me with previous things I've made, and I was determined this time around, starting from scratch, to solve difficult problems that can't be solved unless you do them from the very, very get-go. So that started with the hardest bits, if you see what I mean, that I knew had to be built from the ground up."

The MMO market is notoriously hard to