“Live, Die, Repeat” is the motto in Realm of the Mad God, a pixelated bullet hell massive multiplayer online (MMO) game first published in 2011 by Wild Shadow Studios.

“It’s all about the grind,” senior Nathan Moz said. “In the beginning of the game you grind for better equipment and if you die you lose everything, you have to start all over again.”

With more than a million players, Realm of the Mad God is unique in its gameplay. The game features a permadeath system, in which if the player character dies, the death is permanent and any items held by the character are gone. Players gain “fame” when their character dies, and are able to spend fame as currency.

The game has changed hands multiple times since its release seven years ago. Originally created by Wild Shadow Studios and Spry Fox, Spry Fox sold their stake in the game when Wild Shadow Studios were acquired by Kabam. Kabam sold the game to Deca Games, the current owners, in 2016.

The game has attracted praise from critics for its simple gameplay mechanics, a feature not often found in MMOs. The game is free to play, and relies on microtransactions for revenue. However, due to the permadeath nature of the game, microtransactions are of limited use as the player is all but guaranteed to lose any item they possess when they die. The game has drawn criticism for its control scheme, however, and when playing in the browser the player may encounter bugs that require the page to be reloaded. Right-clicking, for example, would cause the character to continue moving in one direction with no way to stop.

Players are only able to play as a wizard at first, but are able to unlock more classes as they progress. One item that does persist between characters is the player’s pet. Pets provide passive bonuses to the player character and can’t be killed.

Rare items and potions to maximize player stats are dropped from dungeon bosses. There are eight stats to max; attack, defense, speed, dexterity, wisdom, vitality, mana and health, the last two being the most difficult to max.

With the game’s quick-paced nature, players must adopt a form of shortened language to call out dropped dungeons, loot, selling offers and much more to ease communication through chat.

Players can acquire items by buying them with gold or fame, or by killing an enemy that drops loot. Better items are rarer and so the player’s characters will continue to improve as the player completes the more difficult dungeons of the game.

Realm of the Mad God is available on Steam, internet browsers and Kongregate. It requires Flash Player to run.