In development

Native Egypt MMO

A land bridge between two seas. The road across it is the game.

Genre: Online role-playing game (MMORPG)
Setting: Egypt, 16th century
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Platform: PC (Windows)

Development capture

I Overview

Native Egypt MMO is set in sixteenth-century Egypt, in the first years of Ottoman rule, when the Mamluk world still ran through its cities: their builders, their soldiers, their markets and their roads.

Players live on the overland route between Suez, Cairo, Giza and Alexandria — as traders who carry goods and choose their risks, as guardians who keep the caravans safe, or as thieves who take what moves. It is a grounded world built from history, with the older layers of Egypt still visible beneath it.

The road

Two seas, one road

The Red Sea trade comes ashore at Suez. The Mediterranean waits at Alexandria. Between them runs the road that joins the two: across the desert to Cairo, over the Nile at Giza and on to the coast.

That road is the world of the game. Goods, news and danger all travel along it, and everyone wants a share of what it carries.

Illustrative map of the road.

Roles

Three ways to live on the road

Choose how you make your living — and whose side you are on when the caravans move.

I
Trader

Buy, carry and sell. Choose the route, the risk and the protection, and keep what you earn.
II
Guardian

Escort caravans, answer ambushes and keep the road stations safe for those who pay.
III
Thief

Watch the road, strike at what it carries and sell it where no one asks questions.

The first city

Suez

Every journey begins at Suez: a walled port with four gates, a covered souq, a quay where the boats unload and a great mosque rising above the flat roofs.

The city is being built street by street in Unreal Engine 5. Every capture on this site comes straight from the current build.

The mosque within the city. Development capture.

Classes

Begin as one of three

Every character starts from one of three foundations.

I
Warrior

Steel, shield and armour. Holds the line when the caravan is attacked.
II
Archer

A bow and a patient eye. Strikes first, and from a distance.
III
Witch

The keeper of older knowledge, feared and needed in equal measure.

Craft

Made from evidence

Arms, armour, buildings and dress are developed from documented sources — surviving objects, surviving buildings and period records — and then shaped into original designs for the game.

A helmet starts from helmets that survive. A shield starts from a shield that survives. What reaches the game belongs to Native Egypt, but it stands on real ground.