“When you start off, there’s nothing,” begins Klang Games co-founder and CEO Mundi Vondi as I stare at low-poly people wandering around a little city. It’s displayed on a TV in an unassuming corner of the busy Summer Game Fest 2026 Play Days show floor. He adds, “Every character belongs to a player, and the characters live in the game 24/7.”
The idea of a vast shared world without any NPCs is part of the core vision behind Seed, an ambitious player-driven life simulator MMO that’s been a decade in the making for the Berlin-based development team. He explains that your custom character, or Seedling, begins with practically nothing: “There’s just a forest, so you have to start to chop the trees.”
From there, a basic society starts to develop. You can place a little tent and work towards proper permanent housing as resources are acquired. These aren’t pre-made structures either, but rather wholly designed by players using what they have on hand, complete with fully modeled interiors that you can customize as you wish.
Life finds a way
The creation of more and more homes paves the way for a fully-simulated real estate market, with prices of rent and ownership dictated by player demand. “We’re actually working on a feature we call building subdivision,” Vondi adds.
Although players can already build their own towering structures, this would allow them to be broken down into individual rental units. You can create a sprawling property empire if you’re savvy enough, securing a comfortable life for your Seedling purely off rental income.
It’s not just the houses that need to be made by players. Practically every object in the game is the result of a complex player-driven production process. Place an order for a chair with your Seedling, and what arrives will be crafted using wood that’s been cut and crafted by other player characters who are employed by player-created businesses in an exceptionally innovative job system.
You can hire anyone to perform basically any task that you need done (for the right price, of course) by creating a job listing and waiting for someone to apply. Seedlings all have skills that allow them to perform better at certain roles, and you’re actually able to specify what kind of proficiencies an applicant should have. Seedlings’ abilities will improve as they complete more and more tasks — just as when you practice something in real life.
The build being shown off is a closed beta that’s currently live, meaning that it’s already populated by hundreds of real players.
When I got to play, I noticed that my character’s home was pretty dirty. Vondi eagerly explains that I can simply tap a few buttons to create a listing for a personal cleaner, who would come and tidy for me while my character was busy at their own job (the not particularly glamorous task of hauling pallets of water around an industrial site in the early hours of the morning).
“I think it’s probably the most advanced player-driven economy in any game,” he says proudly. “I mean [popular space MMO] Eve Online obviously has a very advanced economy as well. My two co-founders actually came from CCP Games, and we were basically like ‘how do we bring this to a wider audience?’”
At your own pace
Time in Seed proceeds at an accelerated rate compared to the real world, with each day in our time representing about a year of your Seedling’s life. Vondi reveals that your Seedlings last for just over three months at a time, with lives that are split up into distinct stages, ranging all the way from childhood to old age.
One of the most interesting aspects of the game is the fact that the world continues to exist while you’re away from the screen. Leave for a few hours, and your Seedlings will simply get on with things, continuing to work, developing relationships with others, and attending to their various needs. It effortlessly swerves one of the lowest points of any life simulator game—those big dead periods where your character is either busy at work or sleeping while you’re left twiddling your thumbs.
In Seed you can simply leave your character to it, but the team has still come up with a cool way to let you check in while on the go. At the booth I was shown an in-development mobile companion app that lets you see your Seedling’s key stats and even send them text messages. The messaging feature is also available directly in the desktop client, and is powered by a tweaked version of an open-source large language model (LLM) hosted on the game’s servers.
Seedlings can answer questions about their current stats (like why they might be feeling sad or tired) and even respond directly to commands. I asked my minion to take a selfie, and he dutifully whipped out his phone in a flash, holding it out in front of him to take a rather fetching picture that was then viewable in-game.
Other orders, like my request for him to grab a drink or take a shower, were acted upon appropriately too—it all feels seriously futuristic, and it’s exciting to see LLM technology used to create previously impossible forms of in-game interaction, rather than to cut costs or replace artists.
I was so impressed with my hands-on time that I presented the team with one of our few Best of Summer Game Fest 2026 awards at the end of my appointment. It was an accolade they apparently told their in-game character about. I smiled when I checked my phone as I boarded my flight back from Los Angeles and spotted an email from the developers with a screenshot attached showing the Seedling still excitedly discussing the award win days later.
Seed will launch into early access on July 21 via the studio’s own PC game launcher with a Steam version to follow later in 2026. It will cost $29.99 for the base game, with a limited number of more premium founders’ packs also available for those that want to support development and get their hands on some extra in-game perks.
You can also pick up a “Start a Society” Bundle with three game licences if you want to dive in with your friends. You can add it to your wishlist on the studio’s website to learn more.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
