Okay, before you bite my head off for the trigger words "MMORPG" and "solo dev" in the same sentence, hear me out.

My name is Niko. My parents bought a small zoo in Denmark about 30 years ago and converted it into the country's first rescue center for exotic animals. We take in animals that had a hard life, animals from medical testing, cosmetic testing, illegally obtained exotics. People who thought keeping a caracal in their living room was a good idea until it wasn't. We give those animals a home.

About 8 years ago my dad got sick with cancer and we lost him. I moved back home to help my mother run the rescue zoo and care for the 600 animals living here.

Before I moved back I worked as a game developer, started my own company, worked at a game studio, and took part of a software engineering degree. And I had this idea: what if I could build a game that actually helps the animals?

How it started:

My initial idea was to create a community invite-only game where we could have fun together and raise funds for the charity and the rescue animals.

Rescue Wars Online. You're part of the rescue team, you go out on rescue missions, fight evil coffee machine robots, rescue animals, and build your own rescue zoo together with your friends.

Think of it like running your own modded private server for a community, but instead I made my own with a framework where I changed enough to make it ours. I found a solid MMO framework on the Unity asset store (C# client, Java backend) and started bending it into something of our own. At first my skills and the tech weren't there to make it truly custom. My initial idea has always been to make something fun for the community, not something perfect and polished in the first place. Having a world where we could have events, raise funds for the animals, spawn a lot of robots, or go out on fun community-inspired missions together was the goal.

What I've built so far:

* Rescue Missions - Full PvE co-op system. Group up with friends, drop into a mission zone, server generates random objectives. 22 mission areas with progression. You're shutting down Evil Coffee Machine robot power stations and rescuing animals along the way.
* Your Own Rescue Zoo - Private sanctuary instance where you build enclosures, place facilities, and house the animals you rescue. Animals give stat bonuses, enclosures have capacity and upgrades, there's a happiness system. Real gameplay loop: rescue animals, build your zoo, get stronger, take on harder missions.
* 8 Robot Enemy Types - Coffee-machine-themed mobs, each with unique abilities and attack patterns. Grinderjaw ChompBot, Frothblade SpinBot, Mocha MortarBot, you get the idea.
* 4 Classes, Combo Combat, Random Loot - Assault, Tank, Healer, Support. 3-step combo attacks, class abilities, and a random affix system on loot drops.
* Blessing System - Send effects to other players or the whole server. Tied into streaming and community interaction. The idea is that as we raise money for the rescue animals, you could tease me the streamer and do something good at the same time, like donate to the rescue animals and spawn a big evil robot on the stream.

Where we're going:

Right now we're running invite-only servers where a few community members have been invited, and more in the future. Breaking things, figuring out what makes the game fun. When we've got something solid, maybe we open up for more players.

The whole point is to help the rescue animals. Building a fun world for the community while we do something good for the animals is my dream with this project.

Happy to answer anything, let me know if you wanna help test!

Best,

Niko  


I'm Solo Building an MMORPG in Unity to Save 600 Rescue Animals