Ninelives
Ninelives is an open world RPG with MMO-style trappings, built around freeform exploration in a bleak fantasy setting. You roam the world looking for quests, dungeons, and dangerous elites, earning experience from most activities and turning that progress into new skills. Loot hunting and crafting sit alongside combat, letting you chase better gear through drops or by assembling materials into useful items.
 | Publisher: SmokeyMonkeyS Type: Exploration MMORPG Release Date: January 09, 2016 Pros: +Procedural, unpredictable touches. +Progression without traditional levels. +Straightforward, readable UI. +Moody fantasy music. Cons: -Multiplayer support is not available yet. -Left incomplete and appears abandoned. -Visuals feel dated. |
Ninelives Overview
Ninelives aims for an open-ended RPG loop where the main draw is simply pushing into a harsh fantasy world and seeing what you can survive. Character creation starts with four playable races (including options like Ogre and Human), then branches into three class choices: Blade, Mage, or Seeker. It leans away from classic MMORPG leveling, instead awarding experience for many actions and letting you spend that experience directly on skills, such as Tree of Life and Flick, to shape your build over time.
Moment-to-moment combat uses tab targeting, with ranged options like spells and arrows alongside melee chip damage from a short sword. Gear is not locked to specific classes, so the game encourages experimentation, mixing equipment and abilities to fit your preferred style rather than forcing a strict role. Quests exist more as optional direction and quick bursts of experience than as the core structure, which leaves exploration, dungeon delving, and hunting elite enemies as the most consistent sources of challenge and loot. When you want a change of pace, crafting uses gathered materials to create items, giving your scavenging and collecting a clear purpose.
Ninelives Key Features:
- Tab Targeting Combat – select targets quickly, then cycle through skills and attacks to wear down enemies.
- Dark Fantasy World – venture through the grim land of Novemcia, where hostile creatures and bleak scenery set the tone.
- No Levels – earn experience from your actions and convert it into skills without relying on a standard level ladder.
- 4 Races – play as Human, Goblin, Nightbreed, or Ogre, using presets to establish your character’s look.
- Crafting – turn collected ingredients into useful gear and items via professions like Alchemy.
Ninelives Screenshots
Ninelives Featured Video
Ninelives Review
Ninelives is an interesting concept on paper, a small-scale, exploration-first RPG that borrows familiar MMORPG ideas like tab targeting, skill-based progression, and gear chasing. In practice, what stands out most is the structure of its progression. The lack of traditional levels makes advancement feel more granular, because you are frequently earning experience and immediately translating it into new tools. When that loop is working, it creates a steady sense of tinkering and experimentation, especially because equipment is not restricted by class.
Exploration is positioned as the main activity, with quests functioning more like optional objectives than a tightly curated narrative path. That can be a plus for players who prefer wandering and self-directed goals, but it also means the game’s pacing depends heavily on your tolerance for repetition and your willingness to make your own objectives, whether that is clearing dungeons, farming elites, or gathering resources for crafting.
Combat is straightforward tab targeting, built around locking onto a foe and committing to a rotation of ranged attacks or melee pressure. The fundamentals are easy to understand, but the overall feel is constrained by the project’s unfinished state. The interface is clean and readable, which helps, and the fantasy soundtrack supports the grim atmosphere, but the visuals show their age and the game does not deliver on the “MMO” promise in a meaningful way due to missing multiplayer support.
Ultimately, Ninelives reads like a promising prototype from a very small team, with a few smart design choices, particularly the skill-buying progression and flexible gearing. However, the lack of completion and the absence of multiplayer leave it hard to recommend beyond curiosity value for players interested in obscure indie RPG experiments.
Ninelives System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
CPU: Core i3-4150 3.5GHz or Phenom II X4 B60
Video Card: GeForce GTX 650 1GB or Radeon R7 250
RAM: 4 GB
Hard Disk Space: TBD
Official system requirements have not yet been released for Ninelives. The requirements above our based on our experience and will be updated when official numbers become available.
Ninelives Music & Soundtrack
The game leans into a classic fantasy tone musically, using atmospheric tracks that fit its darker world design. More detailed soundtrack information is still pending, and this section will be updated if official track listings or releases become available.
Ninelives Additional Information
Developer: SmokeyMonkeyS
Publisher: SmokeyMonkeyS
Game Engine: Unity
Other Languages: Japanese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portugese, Russian, Czech, Turkish
Closed Alpha: October 09, 2015
Open Alpha: January 09, 2016
Release Date: TBA
Development History / Background:
Ninelives comes from SmokyMonkeyS, a two-person development team. The project entered Closed Alpha on October 09, 2015, followed by an Open Alpha beginning on January 09, 2016 that ran as a limited testing period. As of the latest available information, a full release date has not been announced.