SimpleMMO is a small, text based MMO that features a mixture of different pixel graphics and it is loosely set in a medieval universe. I uses a stepping mechanic where a player takes a step at a time, activating various small events. These can be travel text, which is either a description of something being done by your character, a joke, a quote or a ‘dev log’, and will sometimes drop gold, experience or items. Other events include various resources that can be gathered through four distinct skills, and creature encounters. Resources can be gathered by holding down your finger on the button and releasing it, and repeating till all resources in an area are harvested, so long as you have the correct levels and equipment to gather them. Whilst engaged with a creature, you can attack, special attack, or use an item you’ve bound to the item slot (normally a healing item). There are various different location for travelling, slowly unlocked through levelling your character.
Characters have three main combat skills: Strength, which dictates how much damage you deal, Defense, which dictates how much damage you take, and Dexterity, which dictates how often you can successfully land a hit. Special attack power is also increased over time. Characters also possess four gathering skills, which split the materials you can harvest up. These are fishing, mining, woodcutting and treasure hunting. Each of these levels independently, require their own equipment to gather with and have independent spawn rates. There is also a crafting skill which uses the material gathered in the harvesting skills.
Social features include discussion threads, in game chat and guilds for players to join, that give a few more options player versus player options, and increase drop rates when multiple guild members are ‘stepping’ at the same time.
Other content available for players to take part in include: Quests, where players use quest points to repeat a task to gain gold and experience, Tasks, which challenge players to do a certain number of tasks a certain number of times within a 24 hour span, Battle arena, where players can look for others to PvP or fight up the leagues, Bounties, where players can set and collect bounties on other players, and Jobs, where a player can set their character to work for anywhere between 10 and 200 minutes, where no other gameplay can be done, paying out in gold and experience once done, as well as giving job specific character benefits. The Jobs option is largely used for when players are away from the game.
Most systems are governed by timers, but the core system of stepping can be done without limitation, just with either a longer timer after 50 steps are taken, dubbed ‘Slow Mode.’ Slow Mode can be reduced by either being a premium member, or by acquiring more steps by exchanging a premium currency or watching an advert.