Trove

The first time I logged into Trove I didn’t get it. After getting through character creation I quickly found myself going into a lowbie area meant for levels 1-3. As soon as I got there I was lost. There were no instructions, people were scattered all over the map and I had no idea where to start. I ran around the map for a few hours trying to work out what to and mining anything that looked interesting that was in my path. Needless to say I didn’t accomplish much that first time.

Voxel Populi.

Trove is a little bit like a lot of things. You can build bases and harvest blocks like in Minecraft, you can fight monsters and other players like an MMO and you can waste hundreds of dollars on trinkets like a free-to-play title. The game wears many faces, but without exploring the muddy depths of any single system. A part of this may be chalked up to the game’s target audience. Child-friendly entertainment often sacrifices complexity for accessibility. But this isn’t always the case, and I can’t help but feel like Trove could have been something more.

Played in long sessions, Trove can quickly grow mind-numbingly dull and repetitive, and its performance issues can sometimes be a pain. But played in short sessions, it's a decently fun way to pass the time, either by building structures, battling bad guys, or experimenting with new classes.