The Citadel opens closed beta for its gunship browser MMO

In Brief:

• The Citadel’s closed beta starts Sept. 27, the date on the team’s X account, with spots claimed at thecitadel.com.
• The team describes it as a high-stakes gunship sandbox MMO that runs in a desktop web browser, with permadeath, full loot and a real-money economy.
• Studio Yee-Haw Monster Trucks raised a $3.3 million seed round led by 1kx in November 2023, when the game was pitched as a sci-fi world built entirely on Ethereum.

The Citadel opens its closed beta this weekend. The game’s X account, @0xCitadel, lists the start date as Sept. 27, and players have been claiming spots through thecitadel.com.

The team calls it a “HIGH STAKES GUNSHIP BROWSER MMO.” There’s nothing to install, but you need a desktop or laptop. Mobile browsers aren’t a supported way to play.

Demand broke the claim page

Beta spots have gone out in waves. At one point the team posted that spots were “going a bit quicker than expected” and that the claim page might be “cooked.”

Once the page was fixed, the developers added more slots to make up for the downtime. They also said a few more waves would arrive before Sept. 27 as they showed more of the game.

According to the team, the second wave was meant for players like the developers themselves. They said they’ve spent five years building The Citadel. Between them, they said, they’ve logged 55,000 hours in EVE Online, 20,000 hours in Diablo and Path of Exile and 10,000 hours in Ultima Online.

How a session works

The official site calls the game an ultra-hardcore micro-MMO. You pilot a ship through an ancient megastructure that keeps expanding.

Play is built around short extraction runs. You fit a ship, enter a Breach, which is a timed multiplayer zone inside the Citadel, then fight, recover resources and try to get out with your ship and cargo intact.

Losses are permanent. Your ship and any unsecured cargo are at risk inside a Breach. When a ship is destroyed, whatever can be recovered from it becomes wreckage that other players can claim.

Your main tool is a harpoon. You use it to recover loot, tow objects, connect to machinery, handle cargo systems and work with extraction infrastructure.

You don’t have to stay logged in. Ships, inventory, fittings, resources and progression carry over between sessions.

A player-run market

The in-game economy is designed to be player-driven. According to the game’s FAQ, players recover resources, build equipment, move cargo and lose ships, and that creates supply, demand and a steady need for replacements.

The FAQ says the open economy is meant to let players trade the results of that activity without relying only on a marketplace the publisher controls.

But the team is careful about what exists today. The FAQ says the larger faction war and player-driven world are where the game is headed, and not every part of that plan is in the current early-access build. Systems, balance, content, access requirements and presentation can all change. The FAQ points players to the game’s Discord for playtest news.

From autonomous world to browser MMO

Los Angeles studio Yee-Haw Monster Trucks is making The Citadel. It announced a $3.3 million seed round on Nov. 8, 2023, led by 1kx. Shima Capital, Hashed, Matchbox DAO, Ready Player DAO and several angel investors also took part.

At the time, the studio pitched The Citadel as a sci-fi world built entirely on Ethereum. All game state, assets and logic would live directly in smart contracts instead of on conventional servers. The game had been in development for two years when the round closed.

The founding team listed in the 2023 announcement was Jack Stoops, Max Sallinger, Martino Olmo Fabro, Austin Henderson, Connor Skific and Will Sanford.

The current site talks about a real-money economy and open settlement, but its pitch focuses on extraction runs rather than on-chain infrastructure. The studio’s development notes describe a shift to “Citadel 2.0” and said player-versus-player combat in an open world gave too much purpose, fun and economic activity to leave out.

Peter Pan, a partner at 1kx, said at the time of the raise that The Citadel was “the most ambitious project we’ve seen in the autonomous worlds ecosystem to date.”