I've been playing the browser version of this game since October of 2016, shortly after it was released to the public. I would gladly pay the game's cost many times times over. I can't recommend this game enough.

This is truly a one-of-a-kind experience that you won't find in any other game. The game's most key element is the ability to code your characters in JavaScript. This may be viewed as daunting to prospective players that don't know much about coding, but I encourage those players to give the game a try regardless. The game is an excellent learning tool - most of the game's player began playing with little to no knowledge of JavaScript, but learned and coded their own intricate scripts from the ground up. The community is very helpful towards those who need help coding their characters.

My favorite aspect of the game is automation. Any other MMORPG have boring quests and boring grinds. However, the code function in this game allows you to easily automate repetitive grinding, maybe in a party with your friends, and enjoy PVP, trade + other aspects of the game when you are not AFK.

Kaan ('Wizard' in-game) hangs out in the community Discord channel, where you can chat and provide feedback and new ideas directly to him. Adventure Land has a lot of potential, and with the game going live on Steam, I look forward to the strides the game will take in the coming months.

A big No. Why? Let me start by saying, the idea is really neat. Program your characters to automate doing whatever you want. Even if you aren't a programmer and are just learning, this can be very addictive. I say this as a new player that's nearing level 50 with my characters.

That said, in the game's current form.. you are expected to use scripts to the extreme, leaving your computer on 24/7 grinding away at enemies, automating item/gold transactions as needed, while even simple scripts use far too much CPU due to the unoptimized way the game (or default functions at least) does some things. Coupled with extremely confusing variable handling, such as... if a monster or party member entity leaves your vision or dies, the entity gets stripped of a bunch of variables immediately (ent.x or ent.real_x for example will instantly error your script), yet the entity itself still exists, so you can't just check if it exists. This causes your scripts to error like mad without absolute perfect entity clearing (spamming ent.dead/ent.rip/ent.visible checks to null them out, and spamming get_player to re-get.. players lol). This makes more advanced scripts annoying and inefficient. It also makes working with other players an absolute nightmare, as you end up being forced to send messages between characters to try and sync locations to move to and what not. I still haven't found a way to follow another player into a cave/zone without having them use a script to send my party a message to do so.

Oh, and these errors when you try to access a variable/function on a stripped entity? Unlike normal errors, these won't tell you which line in your code is erroring, so in a huge script you have no idea where you screwed up. I would chalk this up to me just not doing proper entity checking, but not being told what line errored? Brutal.

Going back to the grinding aspect, the main way you get better gear AFAIK, is to buy the same weapons/armor repeatedly, then purchase upgrade scrolls to make them stronger. You get +1 per attempt. The higher the number, the higher the chance of the item being destroyed gets. If you don't have a script to automatically burn your millions of grinded gold to do this, it gets very annoying very fast. Unless you're friends with RNGesus anyway. RNG based item upgrading has always been something I hated in MMOs. It removes the incentive of trying to get rare drops as when you do finally get something out of the ordinary, you have to risk destroying it if you wanna upgrade it to make it useful. Unless you get a thrill out of gambling, this is absolutely not a fun mechanic in my opinion, and just makes the grind more apparent.

As I mentioned, the game is all about botting to the extreme. However, there is also no incentive to make your bots do anything other than stand and attack weaker mobs, because attempting to make something more complex against stronger mobs usually results in a random error or pathfinding glitch getting you stuck, and you dying. Or you'll just straight up get slaughtered from the enemies not being kite-able (is that a word?). Even if you go with the flow and choose to set up a "stand and auto-attack" script then leave your computer on for a few days, you still run into 2 other problems. First is finding a spot to farm that isn't already taken. The safer the spot, the more likely someone's already farming there. This is partially due to the next point. Secondly, is rare mini-bosses that spring up randomly. Unless you modify the default get target function to filter out these boss mobs, or set your max attack on enemies to something only just big enough for the mobs you're targeting, your character can and will accidentally attack one and get murdered quickly. Even if you don't attack them, they can smack you if they get too close, and some of them like Green Jr. will kill you in only a second or 2. If this happens while your computer is unattended, you either just wasted hours of idle time, or your character gets stuck in a death loop after running back lol.

All in all, I really do like this game. But it's because I like it, that I can't recommend it because of just how many annoyances there are. It's early access. So who knows, maybe it will get better. But as for right now, I feel like I'm being punished for attempting to do anything other than stand->attack->stand->attack, and being punished for attempting to actually script myself instead of just lifting some public script. For a little context, I made a script that allows my party of 3 to wander the main map area, targeting mobs with a good hp to xp ratio (mobs level up the longer they exist and give better rewards). When I run out of targets, the party wanders to the next area. All the while, they will kite enemies in a circle to prevent taking damage themselves, and heal up each other as needed. This allows my group to kill much higher level enemies than they would normally, and my theory was... the increased xp and drops might offset the travel time. But in reality, I question if moving between target areas is actually less efficient than say, just standing in the crab area or similar (1.5 xp to hp ratio) and never moving. The latter would likely use a lot less CPU/network bandwidth either way, so what's my incentive to do anything fancy?

I also frequently run into problems with functions like can_move() or is_moving() telling me I can move or already am moving, when I'm actually not, so my characters get stuck thinking they're walking through a wall. Could be the fault of smartmove, but coding my own pathfinding would be tough. Trying to optimize by having 2 of my members follow a party leader, or having my party members follow another player, to reduce how much pathfinding is needed, has resulted in difficulties too due to the function stripping that happens when entities are no longer visible or dead. I'm slowly working my away around this barrage of obstacles, but it's getting less and less fun.

Anyway, this has already gotten really long, so I'll stop here. Short version, cool concept. Program your characters to win. But the rough edges are very rough. I've quickly lost incentive to... do anything really. I'm hoping the game will get better (Including Documentation!), and I'll update my review when it does.

Edit: Troll comments and comments telling me to "git gud" will be ignored and deleted.

This game is essentially abandoned by the only developer, who seems to only check in every few weeks to make sure the servers are still up. Bugs are rampant and generally not fixed unless they start to become abused by more than a few players, item/skill balance is non-existent; and the paladin character was a work in progress when I started which is two years a this point. The entire economy is dictated by a group of ~2-3 players and due to the way item upgrades work you will likely never get your hands on any significant amount of some of the best items as you will always be outbid. Multi-accounting is against the rules but is easily bypassed by simply claiming someone else from your house is playing. Many of the in-game achievements are technically possible
but would require you to spend multiple years completing the same task. Many of the truly late game items don't even drop from monsters or have drop rates that require 6+ months of grinding. At one point there was no class restrictions for some items but this was changed a few years back; the old items that existed before this change remain with no restrictions as "legacy" versions which you as a new player will have no chance of obtaining.

I have had a lot of fun playing this game but it's been in a slow state of dying for several years now and without a significant amount of attention from the developer it's simply not worth investing your time into.

It's the same concept as the game Screeps, you write your code to control the game. You are able to play the game manually using mouse and keyboard, but the game is set up to farm monsters automatically through the code you write.

The strength of Adventure Land is that you can instantly see the result of your code, this way you can spot issues and improve your code quickly. Additionally all code is run on your own computer, so you are not limited by some CPU time on the server. This means that you are able to utilise some fairly complex algorithms. There is a limit for how many operations you can send the server per second, so if you for example have a code that constantly executes character movements you'll get disconnected from the server.

The biggest downside in my opinion is the lack of documentation and beginner guides (there are just a couple of basic ones currently) and documentation. You're given some links that takes you to some unofficial documentation and the source code for most of the functions you'll be using. Right now the best way to get help is using these links and/or joining their Discord channel to search or ask questions there.

Game is based on gear. Best 'starter' gear is attained via random armor/weapon chests received from gems or boss mobs. Best way to get those gems is via arena which is pvp. That is shut down by high level players.

Don't play this game, even if it becomes free.

This is an idle coding game. I played it for just less than a year. In that time, I never really had a realistic chance of obtaining the highest tier items in the game. The developer of the game has publicly stated that he doesn't want players to be able to obtain the best items anymore. So only the veteran players get the best stuff, and if you are new, then bad luck. Whatever, i guess? Except the problem is, people who discover/implement strong farming methods/obtain rare items tend to be punished. I spent 6 months optimising a very specific character build so I could contribute to the "entirely p2p economy". In that time, my farming routine was hit by three (!!!) nerfs/game updates which strongly lowered the profitability of my method. Even though this was a particularly notable example, I was by no means the only player to have this kind of experience. I CANT EMPHASISE THIS LAST POINT ENOUGH

One player spent billions of gold and hit some good RNG to create an item called a 'luck booster', only to have their item hit with a brutal nerf a few days later.
Another player had the good fortune of obtaining the highly coveted "warp vest" item, only to also have its stats nerfed through the floor a mere 2-3 days later. The list goes on and on, these are only a few examples from the weeks leading up to me quitting.

So, players regularly have their gear/methods nerfed. Except when they don't. It's all a bit random.

A notable exception is the 'Angel' +1000% gold buff which was exploited by a small number of players to obtain billions of gold. The exact numbers are unknown, as successful players often tend to be a bit secretive about their methods because of becoming another victim of the never ending nerf spree.

And as if all of this wasn't frustrating enough, even the core mechanics of the gameplay are inconsistent. After several years in early access as an idle coding game, the developer has now decided to turn AL into a PvP game in one of the next updates. .... ok?

Essentially, the MMORPG aspect of adventureland stinks. Nobody can really say what the vision for the game in the future actually is. The part about AL that is the most attractive is the very knowledgeable and helpful community that can be found in the AL discord, but that's about it. You are essentially paying for a public discord server.

Just make sure not to "get on the radar" of the dev like I did. After I tried to give some feedback, I was criticised for taking the nerfs to personally whilst also receiving the following insults:

"But honestly, I value opinions that are more selfless, and aimed towards the common good, when someone complains when their overly significant advantage over other players have been nerfed, it just doesn't hold too much value :neutral_face:"

Whatever. I'll just play something else.

TL;DR

is it fun? yeah sure...
is it worth buying? no, at least not in its current state! screeps is simply just better if you're looking for a programming MMO game
//i'm aware that MMORPG != MMORTS

THE GOOD

• good enough rpg elements: the progression feels slow and grind-y as it should with any MMORPG the classes feels unique but somewhat generic
  
• fair business model: you pay once and you're done you can pay for cosmetic items but just like in warframe you can grind for the premium currency
  
• easy to get into and easy to get back into: a core problem that programming games have is that they are nearly impossible to get back into if you've played screeps or hackmud you know exactly what i mean... the learning curve is quite steep and you will forget everything if you leave for a few months this doesn't happen with this game because of the rather simple mechanics and the easy to use api
  
• an existing community behind it: a multiplayer game is alive as long as there are people playing it and people do play this game and there's a discord server and mods will answer your questions and the devs will keep you updated it's like a really tiny version of blizzard forums

THE BAD

• requires an active device: i'm comparing this game to screeps because of the similarities i hope all of you forgive me for doing this... in screeps you make a change in your script you press ctrl+s and you're done you can close the program and do anything else that you want your code will be running as long as you log in once every 2 months or something like that in this game you need an instance of the game to be open for your code to be running and if you disconnect in the middle of the night you won't get any progression because you were sleeping
  
• RNG based progression: every time that you level up a gear item there's a chance for it to be destroyed and it feels horrible when it does i am aware that on average getting a high level item costs a specific amount of currency but the randomness takes the fun out of the progression
  
• "going open source": i think that this is going to hurt the game a lot if it actually ever happens... if you remember i said that multiplayer games are alive as long as there are people playing it the only thing that going open source will accomplish for the game is dividing the community... other devs don't need the source code of this game to create their own programming mmo game does it help? yes is it required? absolutely not!

THE UGLY

• lackluster art design: i believe that this is a problem that all programming games are going to suffer from to all eternity... except maybe for 7 billion humans... but for some reason this game looks extra generic and ugly to me maybe it's just me who knows.... IMO the game needs an artistic makeover
  
• horrible HORRIBLE documentation: this is the thing that is hurting the game the most right now! the item descriptions are nearly non-existent, the API references are incomplete and without the community behind it playing this game would be impossible
  
• early-access-nes: this game suffers from problems that most early-access games suffer from unfinished areas, unintuitive controls and menus etc. etc.
  
• incomplete API: the API gets the job done but there's more to be desired and it fails to give that professional feel that most enterprise level APIs do but it's not that much of a big deal...

I wrote this review because at some point in my life I tried to make a game like Adventure Land myself. I got some problems along the way that made me think if a game like this can even be fun. It looks like the developer made the same mistakes that I did but decided to finish the game anyway. I wrote this review to understand why I failed and to understand why this game failed.

I've been playing this game for roughly 4 days nonstop. And what I mean by that is that I was mostly AFK for 3 days and just had the game running. I currently have 3 characters at level 52(ish) and I think that I will stop for now because there are some things that I don't like about the current state of the game.

1) What is this game?:

This is an MMO where you write JavaScript to automate absolutely everything. The game itself is really simple if you play it without writing code. You walk around with your hero, attack enemies that are weaker than you, use class specific skills(abilities), level up, get items, upgrade items, sell items, restock on potions and then repeat the process. After a while all of this can AND WILL get very repetitive if you don't write scripts that do all of that for you.

2) What I have already automated:

I’ve made a party of 3 heroes. Warrior(HP tanker), Mage(Low HP, long range and high damage), Priest(Healer). They all stand in a cluster of enemies and farm XP and items. They all cooperate automatically. They share potions, attack the same target, heal each other, protect each other. All of that is done by a script that I’ve made, while I am doing something else IRL. Then they all go to the town and upgrade their loot. It is very annoying to manage items by hand that’s why having a script for that is a MUST. And then they go back and the cycle continues.

3) Why I like this game:

As a programmer I really enjoy automating tasks that I don’t like to do myself and this game seems like exactly what I need. The idea of creating an ultimate teem that works without your presence is very cool. And, like I’ve said, I tried to make a game like that, so I was curious to see if Adventure Land is better or not.
The community is nice. They helped me to understand a lot of things about the game and gave some directions. If you will play this game you should also join the discord channel.

4) Programming experience:

The main thing in programming-based games is the act of programming itself. And it is really sad to say that the programming experience has been very unpleasant so far. The way how you write code is very disorganized and janky. First of all, a lot of code is repeated between characters. For example, I have a function that finds an item that could be upgraded and upgrades it. This exact function is copy pasted in to every character’s code, and that means if I want to change something, I would have to do it 3 times in 3 game windows.

The game’s code editor feels unfinished and unprofessional and also doesn’t even have a direct support for external IDE’s. That means that you have to painfully write all of your code there or you can find some janky solution using JS trickery.
This game has a library of pre-made functions for communicating with the game. A lot of those are either inefficient or have bugs.

The UI of the game is kinda all over the place. It feels like a lot of things are made intentionally uncomfortable. For example, if you want to find an ID of an item you have to write a command that shows you the JSON object of your surroundings. It contains all NPCs around you, all the mobs and other stuff. Then you have to find a string that indicates the ID of the item. It all could’ve been simplified by adding an extra field in the UI. Something like (Name: Sharp Blade, Strength: 10, ID: ”blade”). Another example is that you can’t send gold or items to another hero without writing code. It could’ve been simplified by allowing the player to drag and drop items between players. (There are also other examples)

5) JavaScript:

There are a lot of programming games that DON’T use real life programming languages (For example, all of the Zacktronics games). The difference between JS and “designed” language is that one is made for web development and the other one is made specifically for this game. One has a ton of features that are complicated and the other one has only the things you will need in the game.

I recently played Exapunks and it came with 2 beautiful manuals that contain instructions for the language and a whole ton of worldbuilding for the game. I printed those manuals and had them on my table through the entire playthrough of the game. Coding in designed language feels like solving a puzzle but playing a game while programming in JS feel like doing work. I might as well go finish my actual website instead of playing this. After all, we play games to escape reality in some way.
Then I will just say that JavaScript is a bad language… fight me! (or not, let’s not discuss it there. There are plenty of arguments online already)

6) Game mechanics:

The game feels like it is just all over the place. A lot of things feel unnatural and unfinished. It might be just because the game is in the early access or because the developer doesn’t have a clear vision of what would make this game fun.

-Enemy placement is silly. You go to one place, here is a bunch of bees, you go to another place, here is a bunch of slimes. And there is nothing different about enemies except their appearance, damage and drops (there are other small things but those don’t matter). They all follow the same pattern. The enemies are just slapped on the map with different textures and stats. Boring.

-Skills system is very poor. There is not much to experiment with. All classes start with all of their skills locked behind a level requirement or the amount of maximum mana you have. After a couple of hours of grinding you have only one or two skills to work with. And if you unlock all of them(3 or 5) there is still pretty much no creativity in how you can use them. For the game about automation there is not much to automate. There should be a lot more skills with different ways to use them. There should be more room for strategy.

-Stupidly grindy quests like “go kill 500 bats and come back”. You get a coin for each quest you finish and some items require 2000 coins to buy. Instead of having 5 stupidly expensive items the game should have 50 cheap items. Those price tags are there just to stretch out the game.

-Crafting mechanic is there… It is just there… I’ve played for 3 days and didn’t get a single ingredient for crafting anything.

-There is very little content in this game. Everything is just numbers. Get _ of this item, level up __ item to level _, kill _ of __ enemies, Reach level __. Even some clicker games have more content.

The way to fix all of this is to give the player a lot of small things to do instead of giving them 3 big things to do. There always needs to be something to sidetrack to. A good example would be a game like Minecraft or Factorio. You have a single big goal but you also have SOOO many small things to do.

7) Game plays itself.

I’ve been going the same thing for past 3 days. After you automate everything the gameplay consists of booting up the game, finding a spot to farm and then not turning of the game for 24 hours. You wake up the next morning, check if your characters are still alive, manage some items and then repeat the same process. And if you automate even that, then you don’t have to do literally anything. GAMEPLAY!

8) The world:

For the game that is called Adventure Land there are no adventures in there. There is no reason for anything. You are spawned in this world to farm for items but what are those items for? There is no princess to save, no dragon to kill, no evil lord, no dungeons, no bosses, etc. Your goal is always to farm a group of mobs until you get enough XP or items to move to the next group of mobs.

I just spent my whole weekend studying Javascript so that I can make better code for my characters.

I've always been a competitive gamer, but as I've gotten older I don't have the time to dedicate that kind of time anymore. If I come up with a good strategy to optimize my code better, the code will run itself and I can keep moving forward in other areas of my life. I don't need to be there, present, every step of the way. That is the beauty of this game.

If you've been annoyed by game economies broken by botting, this game provides a good solution to the problem. The CODE element of the game is available for everybody. It throws code in your face, by doing so equalizing the status of all players.

I received this product for free in order to help the developer work out issues for Windows 7 users, however I am in no way affiliated with the game or recieve any monetary benefits.

I have much more than just the hours you see on my profile, possibly thousands. It's been in development for a few years now and myself as well as a small group of others have been playing throughout that time helping the developer bug fix, add content, give feedback, etc.

This is totally a one of a kind game, the closest I can think to it might be Screeps, but this is still vastly different.

I found this game while I was searching around for decent MMO bots and this appealed to me because I realized I could build on my account by botting legally, but there was a catch: I had to write my own bot code from scratch using JavaScript.

I never realized it, but this game has been a great tool for teaching myself programming and JavaScript skills, and has been fun with a great community on Discord. This game offers all of the normality you would expect from a 2D MMORPG, and while the player count may be small now I expect it to grow now that it's been released to Steam.

You might think the price is "high" for a game like this but I can assure you it's not, I even advocated for the developer to charge more than he currently is, because I think he's earned it and the game provides more than that quality of worth. You can get hundreds of hours out of this game easily through tweaking your code, playing manually, or just talking with other players. You can get thousands of hours out of this game if you let your botting do its thing once you have automated your characters tasks.

If you have kids to take care of, a full-time job, school, anything that distracts you from gaming as much as you might like, this is a great chance for you to take advantage of letting your characters grind while you're away, and it's rewarding coming back to it to see what loot they've acquired.

The level of depth for the game is surprisingly large, but the learning curve was not as intimidating as I thought it would be when I first started playing. If you consider trying this game out, I've written a small guide in the community hub that will hopefully explain a bit more in greater detail.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1636142608

I give this game a 9.5/10, easily!