The Legend of California sets first public playtest for March 26

Kintsugiyama has opened sign-ups for the first public playtest of The Legend of California, the new multiplayer game from Jeff Kaplan’s studio. According to the Steam announcement, the test runs March 26 through March 30, though the team says the player pool will likely be small.

The studio also confirmed the game is headed for early access at some point, but there’s no release window yet. For now, Kintsugiyama says it plans to roll the game out gradually through alpha and beta phases.

Based on the studio’s intro video and a long developer livestream, The Legend of California is aiming for a mix of FPS combat, co-op multiplayer, and survival sandbox elements. The setting pulls from California Gold Rush imagery, but the developers say it isn’t meant to be historically strict. They’ve also been clear that they don’t consider it a straight survival game.

• The game is being built with co-op in mind first, with some PvP zones rather than full-map PvP.
• Bases are safe areas right now, and base raiding is not currently in the game.
• Death usually drops a small amount of money, while items gathered in PvP zones can drop if you die there.
• The team discussed different rulesets, suggesting separate PvE and PvP server options may be planned.
• Servers are expected to reset monthly, but some unlocks such as skins and certain recipes will carry over.

That monthly reset setup makes it sound like Kintsugiyama wants runs to feel seasonal without wiping out everything players earn. Some of these details came from an early build shown on stream, so they could still change before wider testing or early access.