Essentially, you start out in a big open land, surrounded by player made houses. It will remind you somewhat of Second Life, minus the perverted builds. Everything shares the same rustic quality, but the game still allows you a lot of freedom to create something unique. The idea is to not only survive, but to carve out a little piece of Heaven for yourself by chopping down trees, flattening land, farming and fighting off killer wolves and other wildlife.

While it sounds easy enough, it is not. Almost immediately, you will have to ask someone how to do some very basic things, a process that does not need to be as complicated as it is but once you learn how to "Activate" anything you use, the game starts falling into place.

I started out by trying to find a plot of land to settle on with my friends. It took a while to find a space suitable enough with plenty of access to materials, while still maintaining a decent distance from other players. The game asks each player to respect a 5-square radius rule to discourage griefing. It works; they have created an environment of mostly polite players who do not want to build next to each other that do not like theft.

Within a few days, we had a few fences marked out and buildings being built. Immediately we started seeing certain players taking on certain jobs and attempting to learn certain skills. This is one of the glorious things about WURM; it allows players to form groups and to find solutions, together, to many problems. Instead of trying to out-do your neighbor, as in Second Life, you want to work with everyone.

Of course, the game runs at a very slow pace. If you want to build a wall for your house, for example, you need to make 20 planks and some large nails. You need to make a hammer, too.

Once you have those items you must hammer for around a minute for each plank, sometimes failing in the process. Once you are done, though, you truly feel proud of what you made.

Skills are capped at level 20 on the free server, but between all the skills paving, carpentry, cooking, etc., you will have plenty to do and learn.

How accessible is the game for disabled players?

Well, sort of accessible depending on the disability.

Once again, I am surprised that such an obviously clever developer never stopped to consider disabled players, or even players with pain issues/mild control issues, when they made their game.

For example, if you want to chop down a tree you must right click on the tile the tree is on and select "Chop Down." Then you sit back and watch as the meter ticks down as you chop. You need to repeat this process several times, and then some more to chop up the tree into manageable logs. With all this clicking, someone like me with my wrist pain from years of drumming starts to feel it. It becomes quite taxing.

Now imagine that you have control over only one hand! You need the combination of the keyboard and mouse to work, without the options for any key-bindings.

Why not allow some alternate form of selecting? How about allowing players to bind keys to the keys they need the game to use?

A few simple fixes would allow this game to be played by many more people. After extensive testing, I could not find any way to do something besides moving up to something with your keyboard and right clicking on it to activate whatever it is. As much as you might need to be selecting something, it would be very nice if you had a different approach.

Color-blind players might have some issues when they are hurt or attacked, being that your normal health is illustrated as a mint-green bar that shows more red as you get hurt. A text box will tell you that you are hurt, but that can scroll by fast. Again, this is a case of a simple toggle or setting that allows players to switch the colors.

Deaf or hard of hearing players should have a few issues, the sounds in the game indicate certain activities, but the progress bar will also let you know.

It looks like this is another case of ".this is a great game as long as you have no mobility issues!" Still, the game is such a charmer that I would recommend those that can to try it. It is rare to play a game that is seemingly so simple yet so complicated at the same time.

It is unfortunate that a good game like this excludes certain players.