Erenshor is a simulated MMO built for singleplayer by a single person

Brian "Burgee," who only goes by his first name, has a 9-5 job in healthcare and a young family, so he doesn't get much time to game. As a result, he has to do everything in games by himself—including develop them.

When he realized that he hadn't scraped the time together to scratch his lingering MMORPG itch since playing the original EverQuest, he decided to look for a game that would simulate the MMO experience without needing him to rely on other players—or vice versa. When he couldn't find one, he made himself into a game company (Burgee Media) and started building his own pseudo-MMO in 2021.

The result is Erenshor, an Early Access Steam game that looks a lot like RuneScape, plays a lot like EverQuest, and requires only a single real human to interact with the hundreds of simulated players inside. It's scoring close to a thousand positive reviews on Steam, where it retails for $20 with no subscription.

"I measure success by being able to do this full time," Brian says. "That's it. That's all I want."

It is perhaps a testament to why Brian needed a simulated MMO that he has never once had the time to play the 800-pound gorilla in the market, World of Warcraft.

"My only actual MMO experience is EverQuest," he says. "I grew up in the country with horrible internet, and my EverQuest experience was lagging out of raids and not getting invited to things. So I don't know if that planted some seeds about a single player MMO experience.

"I always Google singleplayer style MMORPG, and I never found one, but I found a whole lot of other people looking for it too, and that's what made me start working on it."

The result is surprisingly deep, with more than 35 zones and 75 quests. The graphics are fairly crude, but in a way that adds to the charm. And the other "people" are definitely the best part.

"They're not your static NPCs in an RPG," Brian says. "They're actually engaging with those NPCs just like you are. So you'll run into a group of them in a dungeon, you'll run into them in town selling items, and it's all sort of randomized. Every player's going to have a different group of simulated players. They're going to be friends with different simulated players and they're going to get that MMO experience."

That variety has players raving about the in-game experience.

"This game somehow manages to feel like an actual MMO, not just in combat and exploration, but in spirit," writes LordofEnvy in a Steam review after 53 hours of gameplay. "The world is alive."

"A superb game that fills its exact purpose. Feels just like playing old school Everquest, but I can party with a perfect group every time," writes j4kwyld, 64 hours in.

Brian says that despite the realistic dialog—he admits some "players" are based on real people—Erenshor's sim players won't let you down like the real thing.

"It's funny, because a really common request is, 'Hey, I want the simulated players to steal loot. I want them to kick me out of a group," Brian says. "But you don't want that. I put in some code to simulate the players being offline sometimes as a test. This was a requested feature: 'I want them to have real life schedules.'

"After I pushed that update to the testers, I got complaint after complaint. It's fun to talk about getting picked on and beat up by the simulated players, but it's not fun when it actually happens. You just start feeling like you're playing an actual MMORPG again."

That doesn't mean they're always instantly available; if you invite them, they may tell you they're in a dungeon with other simulated players and then wrap up a minute later, to add a bit to the realism. Those characters do develop over time. As they get dungeon loot—some of which they'll ask you for as you're running with them—they keep that leveled-up status. They'll invite you to groups and send you whispers.

What they won't do is generate their commentary using large language model AI. The cost is too prohibitive because of the tokens needed, Brian says, so for now all their conversation is scripted.

There's a bit of simple crafting and four basic classes. The focus of Erenshor is getting you out there to kill things, collect loot, and interact with other players that don't exist. It's a big world: running from one side to the other without fast travel (there are teleport pads, but no mounts) would take you 30-40 minutes.

If you like that experience, terrific—just don't bother trying to bring a friend.

"This is a personal choice of mine. I keep weird hours. I play almost every game single player for that reason. And anytime I buy a game that has multiplayer content, I can't shake the feeling that, hey, this was balanced for two people," Brian says. So Erenshor features no multiplayer whatsoever.

"I want gamers to know that going in, because it's really important that they know if they're playing it solo, they're going to have the complete experience."