After reading a half-dozen posts over at Inventory Full, I decided to see what the hell Chimeraland was all about.

After a few hours of playing… yeah, maybe I’m missing something, but this feels like some poor mobile port Asian jank.

The character creation process is pretty outrageous, if you’re into that. I think someone mentioned that there are 18 different species you can choose from, but on top of that you can use the age slider to play as literal children. Not just human children, but cow and sheep children. And that’s just the start! There are ridiculous sliders that let you change your ears and cheekbones into non-Euclidean shapes. Some serious Mario 64 title screen vibes.

All you need to know about the PC version of this game is that Full Screen is not yet implemented. I was today years old when I found out that “Full Screen” was a game setting that had to be built and not, you know, something that is a default state of being. The game is filled to the brim with UX jank like this. For example, not having any apparent way to increase turning speed. Or having the camera default to action-cam style, but having dozens of buttons that need clicked with the mouse. Finally realized that you need to press the [`] button to get a mouse cursor active, which is fine, but any attempt to unselect something puts you right back into action-cam mode.

The translation runs the gamut from poor to nonexistent. Hard to fault them on this front, considering that there are zero US/EU servers – the game prominently displays “SEA” on the launcher.

In principle, Chimeraland is doing some interesting things in the MMO space. The ability to build a house anywhere you please. Being able to capture and either ride or bring into battle any creature in the game world. Light survival elements. Seeing all your weapons on your back at once is cool.

Chimeraland is also objectively worse than any game that already does any one of these things. Hell, the whole time I was playing I kept asking myself why I wasn’t just playing ARK. Or Fallout 76. Or Guild Wars 2. While I was pondering, some players decided to fight a “grand” enemy outside my house. I joined in a bit, then kept eating ranged AoEs because the dash-move wouldn’t activate, and finally died. I respawned and got back in the mix, then the creature died, and… nothing. No idea whether I gained XP for that, or should have had a chance at loot, or whether my dying removed that chance. Felt like a big waste of time.

Which, incidentally, describes the rest of my game experience with Chimeraland.