Life Beyond is back with an early access preview for those with Founder’s Watches NFTs in their wallets. And though the game is limited and somewhat basic at the moment, the gameplay is generally smooth and we also get our first view of the open world of Dolos!

This early access preview brings us to a new point in the space-time continuum of Life Beyond. After initially exploring the world during alpha back in July of 2022, Life Beyond has held a number of alpha playtests. But none before with an open world concept!

After losing our planetary base during a major conflict, we are back, after having apparently crash-landed on the planet (I couldn’t find a lore explanation of how this happened). Now players are waking up from cryo-sleep, learning to navigate the hostile environment, and tasked with quests to help our people get setup on this alien planet.

Only those with Founder’s Watches (current floor about about $530 on Open Sea) can access the game at the moment. Though I would expect this to open to a larger group of players sometime soon.

More About the Early Access Preview

This preview is somewhat limited at the moment. A series of tutorial quests walk you through the basics of harvesting and crafting. Players are also tasked with exploring the crater we have landed in. Along the way, players can level up their weapons, battle creatures, harvest, craft, and complete quests, all in an open world MMO environment with a day and night cycle. Not bad for a starting point! And, it’s important to remember that we are still in just an early alpha phase of the game.

But this gives us a first taste of the MMO world. Previous Life Beyond play sessions involved instanced adventures, though it did support multiplayer also.

In a recent AMA, the Life Beyond team revealed that part of the game development will be guided by community quests. For example, players will be able to upgrade their basic weapons from the start. But in order to access tier 2 weapons, the playerbase will need to complete a large community quest to get the fabrication machine up and running (or something like that). This not only helps build community and gives the playerbase a shared purpose, but it also provides the dev team with space to steadily drop out new features and updates to the game.

There are no announced rewards for participating in this playtest. And expect all progress to be wiped in the near future as well. But it is an opportunity to get a feel for what the open world gameplay will look like. And a chance to find and report bugs and issues to the team!

Download the game directly from the Life Beyond website.

What is Life Beyond?

Life Beyond is a free-to-play, play-and-earn, FPS-style MMORPG with a third-person view. In Life Beyond, players are citizens of the Dolos Planet, an alien world around a distant star. Sent to build a new society on the planet, the colonists discovered the planet infested with hostile wildlife. Now the players must work to help secure a spot for humans in this alien landscape!

The gameplay follows the lore, with reasoning for out of game events (such as server closures) written in as part of the storyline.

Players venture into the world to fight creatures and gather resources. Not only for themselves, but also to help complete community missions, larger quests that will open up new features and gameplay.

Life Beyond is currently in alpha testing, with game servers opened for special events on an irregular basis. They are also working on creating a token called BILF, a token for a ‘social consensus layer’ that connects to the Bitcoin network.

To learn more about Life Beyond, visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and join their Discord.