Veloren

Veloren is an open source voxel RPG that, in the words of its own developers, was inspired by titles such as Cube World, Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game is mainly focused on online play and includes a large community of players, although you can also play offline to explore the world by yourself, at your own pace and without having to interact with anyone else.

Regardless, the first thing you have to do when you start playing Veloren is create a character. You can choose between six different races: humans, orcs, dwarves, elves, the undead, and danaris. It's important to note that this choice is purely cosmetic, as none of them have any limitations or special abilities of any kind. During character creation, you can also choose which weapon you want to start with, as well as different hairstyles and eye types.

Once your avatar is ready and you've given it a name, you can enter the virtual world of Veloren. You'll always start in the same village, which is also the location of your original respawn point, otherwise known as the place you return every time your character dies. That said, you can also generate your own world using a new seed, which is easy to do but can be very time consuming (especially depending on the power of your PC).

As usual for games in this genre, in Veloren, you'll have total freedom to move around the world: you can climb mountains, dive in rivers, explore forests, travel through villages, and so on. During your adventures, you'll encounter all kinds of creatures. In the villages, you can talk to the villagers, who are mostly friendly and will want to trade with you; outside the villages, on the other hand, you'll encounter all kinds of beasts and enemies eager to kill you. Fortunately, the game has a very deep combat system that requires some skill but is also tremendously fun.

Another element required by any self-respecting open world game is crafting. As long as you have the right materials and are near a suitable workstation, you can create all kinds of useful objects. On an anvil, for example, you can forge weapons and armor if you have some metal in your inventory. On the other hand, if you're near a pot and you have meat, you can cook it, which makes its healing effects much more effective.

Veloren is an outstanding open world role-playing game that holds its own when it comes to the vast majority of commercial titles belonging to the same genre. It's a beautiful project with around 20 active developers that has also received contributions from more than 150 people, including artists from many different disciplines.