Archaelund Revealed, Party-based Follow-up to Exiled Kingdoms

: Category: News Archive

Hits: 3925

According to this Steam announcement, 4 Dimension Games, the studio responsible for Exiled Kingdoms, is currently working on a new project that sounds quite a bit like a Gold Box-style RPG. Entitled Archaelund, this new game will combine first person exploration with turn-based isometric battles and power it all with a deep role-playing system.

Here's what we know about Archaelund at this point, along with a link to the latest Exiled Kingdoms patch notes:

Today's update brings 100% complete Polish translation and other small improvements/fixes. You can check the full changelog of the game for details.

Since September I've been working full time on my next project. It's still too early for a full announcement, but there's a few things I can share about it already.

Archaelund

Prepare yourself to take control a full party of adventurers, and explore the broken lands of the vast continent of Andoria, home of the fallen Empire. The Exiled Kingdoms are claiming the shores of their mythical Homeland, but they'll find the region is not as deserted as they expected... you'll explore freely a huge world full with small details and hidden secrets, and will get inmersed in dozens of small stories and quests, and a main plot of epic proportions (no, really!).

Archaelund features a very unique combination of real-time exploration and careful turn-based strategy during combat; you'll explore the world in first-person perspective in a 3D world, much like in the Elder Scrolls games or in the classic Wizardry or Might&Magic games. But battles will happen in isometric perspective! When combat begins the camera floats up to offer a top-down view of the scene, so you can individually control your party members. The idea is to have the best of both worlds: an immersive exploration and tactical combat at the same time, allowing huge epic battles..

One of the main aspects of the game is the Geryon Rulesystem. I've been working on it for over a year already, specifically for Archaelund. I believe it offers many interesting ideas of my own, but at the same time it's deeply inspired by the versatility and flavor from my favorite tabletop RPGs from the 80s (WFRP, AD&D, Runequest, Rolemaster...) . Geryon will offer endless character development options; you can go for a straightforward approach... but it'll also allow crazy builds, even crazier multiclassing, and you'll never run out of things to try, if that's your thing.

Content is, as EK players probably guess, another essential pillar of the game. Expect the same open-world design, and the same weird combination of seriousness and silly humor and themes you "enjoyed" in EK; yeah, I am afraid the terrible jokes stay, and might get even worse.

Note: despite taking place in the Exiled Kingdoms setting, Archaelund is a completely standalone game. It's a far more ambitious project in scope, both in terms of design, graphics and depth.

There's little else I can disclose at the time since development is still at a very early stage. But I'll make a proper and detailed announcement in the next weeks/months.