The Citadel kicks off closed beta for its browser-based gunship MMO

In Brief:

• According to the team’s X account, closed beta for The Citadel begins Sept. 27, and players can claim spots at thecitadel.com.
• The developers call it a high-stakes gunship sandbox MMO played in a desktop web browser, featuring permadeath, full loot and a real-money economy.
• In November 2023, studio Yee-Haw Monster Trucks closed a $3.3 million seed round led by 1kx, back when the game was pitched as a sci-fi world built entirely on Ethereum.

Closed beta for The Citadel gets underway this weekend. The Sept. 27 start date appears on the game’s X account, @0xCitadel, and players have been securing spots via thecitadel.com.

In the team’s own words, it is a “HIGH STAKES GUNSHIP BROWSER MMO.” No installation is required, though a desktop or laptop is. Playing on a mobile browser is not supported.

The claim page buckled under demand

The team has been handing out beta spots in waves. At one stage, it posted that spots were “going a bit quicker than expected” and warned that the claim page might be “cooked.”

After the page was repaired, the developers released extra slots to compensate for the outage. They also promised a few more waves before Sept. 27 as they revealed more of the game.

The second wave, the team said, was aimed at players like the developers themselves. They said they’ve put five years into building The Citadel. Collectively, they said, they’ve spent 55,000 hours in EVE Online, 20,000 hours in Diablo and Path of Exile and 10,000 hours in Ultima Online.

What a session looks like

On the official site, the game is described as an ultra-hardcore micro-MMO. Players fly a ship through an ancient megastructure that is constantly growing.

The core loop revolves around short extraction runs. You outfit a ship and head into a Breach, a timed multiplayer zone within the Citadel, where you fight, gather resources and attempt to escape with both your ship and your cargo in one piece.

Nothing lost comes back. Inside a Breach, your ship and any cargo you haven’t secured are on the line. Once a ship is destroyed, anything salvageable from it turns into wreckage that other players are free to claim.

The harpoon is your primary tool. It lets you recover loot, tow objects, hook into machinery, manage cargo systems and interact with extraction infrastructure.

There’s no need to remain online. Your ships, inventory, fittings, resources and progression persist from one session to the next.

An economy run by players

The game’s economy is built to be driven by its players. Per the FAQ, players salvage resources, craft equipment, haul cargo and lose ships, generating supply, demand and an ongoing need for replacements.

The FAQ explains that the open economy aims to let players trade the fruits of that activity rather than depending solely on a marketplace run by the publisher.

Still, the team is cautious about what is actually available now. According to the FAQ, the broader faction war and player-driven world represent the game’s direction, and not all of that vision is present in the current early-access build. Systems, balance, content, access requirements and presentation are all subject to change. For playtest updates, the FAQ directs players to the game’s Discord.

From autonomous world to browser MMO

The Citadel is being developed by Yee-Haw Monster Trucks, a studio based in Los Angeles. On Nov. 8, 2023, it announced a $3.3 million seed round led by 1kx, with participation from Shima Capital, Hashed, Matchbox DAO, Ready Player DAO and several angel investors.

Back then, the studio presented The Citadel as a sci-fi world built entirely on Ethereum, with all game state, assets and logic stored directly in smart contracts rather than on traditional servers. By the time the round closed, the game had already been in development for two years.

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

While today’s site mentions a real-money economy and open settlement, its pitch centers on extraction runs instead of on-chain infrastructure. The studio’s development notes describe a move to “Citadel 2.0,” explaining that player-versus-player combat in an open world delivered too much purpose, fun and economic activity to leave out.

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