Indie RPG Ardenfall, inspired by Morrowind, launches in early access this year.

“Ardenfall is almost cheeky in how close it is to a classic ‘thesda game,” Alice Bell wrote of the demo to this open-world RPG back in the Aliceful year of 2023. She also asked me about my own propensity for game discovery in my staff writer interview, to which I replied she knew I was OK at it because she nicked the idea for the Ardenfall article from a comment I left. Good taste, Alice, and good taste, me: Ardenfall is great fun. It’s had a demo kicking around since 2022, and now it’s set for an early access release this year. You’ll find a steamin’ hot tray-tray* below.

Ardenfall is notable for its lack of marauding ‘go here next’ fingers. Instead you’ll navigate its world through NPC hints and the original signposting itself, signposts. There are factions, conversation stats, quest reactivity, all that good stuff. As for combat, here’s reliable old mate Steam with the goods:

“Choose your weapon. Now choose another. If you are stuck, there’s always more options to get you out of a bind – a throwing potion, a single use spell, or a throwing knife of fire may do the trick. A mage specialized in summoning may spawn a great beast to do their bidding, while a thief may toss a potion of silence on their targets to ensure a clean kill”.

It’s from sixteen-strong Spellcast Studios. That number includes voice actors, and they’ve been working on the game for seven or so years now. I imagine a good chunk of that time was spent on making every NPC killable, charmable, or stealable-fromable. Time well spent, say I.

*The official RPS term for ‘trailer’. Unless Edwin ends up editing this, in which case I have no idea how that got there. [“troll-troll”, morelike – Ed]