Kickstarter has had a bit of a mixed track record with the video game industry. On one hand, Kickstarter has birthed some ofthe greatest Indie games ever made, includingFTL,Shovel Knight,Pillars of EternityandHollow Knight. But on the other hand, it’s also led to some infamous disasters, includingMighty No. 9,Stray Souls, andGodus. Hopefully,The Wayward Realmswill find itself in the former category.
A fantasy RPG that was originally announced back in August 2021,The Wayward Realmsfinally opened up its Kickstarter at the end of May this year. By June 11,The Wayward Realms' Kickstarter hit its goal of $500,000, and by the time it ended, it reached an impressive $636,000. From the footage released so far,The Wayward Realmsseems like it’s going to be an incredibly ambitious game, and there’s a lot fans of olderElder Scrollsentries should be excited about.
Elder Scrolls Fans Should Keep The Wayward Realms On Their Radar
The Wayward Realms' Development Team Has an Impressive Pedigree
A focal point ofThe Wayward Realms' marketing so far has been the game’s two primary directors: Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay. Both Peterson and LeFay worked at Bethesda Softworks during its earliest days, and both men are credited with being two of the key figures behind the creation ofThe Elder Scrollsfranchise. Back in the early 1990s, Julian LeFay was the director and a programmer on the very first game in the series,The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Peterson worked alongside him, writing the vast majority of the game’s lore.
Though they weren’t alone in their efforts, Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay are widely regarded as two of the most important people related to the birth ofThe Elder Scrolls, and their work didn’t stop at its initial conception. Both Peterson and LeFay played major roles inThe Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall’s development, with Peterson continuing to flesh out the universe with his writing and LeFay being credited as the game’s project leader, designer, and programmer. Peterson continued to work onThe Elder Scrollsall the way up untilOblivion’s release in 2006, writing many of the title’s in-game books.
Together with renowned composer and sound designer Eric Heberling, Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay founded OnceLost Games in 2019, an Indie studio that’s now focused on creating a spiritual successor toThe Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall. That spiritual successor isThe Wayward Realms, and its initial wave of trailers certainly give offclassic Bethesda RPGvibes.
The Wayward Realms Is a Spiritual Successor to Early Elder Scrolls Games
Described on its Steam page as a “Grand RPG,“The Wayward Realmsis putting itself forward as the spiritual successor to the originalElder Scrollstitles, and in the process, theold-school RPG formulaas a whole. One ofThe Wayward Realms' defining features is its gigantic map, boasting over 100 “realistically scaled” islands that contain sprawling cities filled with thousands of NPCs.
According to a recent update on the game’s Steam page,The Wayward Realmsis currently set for release on Early Access in the latter part of 2025, alongside a prequel novel.
The Wayward Realmsis leaning all the way into its classic RPG approach, allowing players to fully customize their character’s skills and build to suit their own role-playing desires. This is bolstered by the game’s in-depth dialog system that allows players to address a variety of topics and take an array of different actions while conversing with an NPC.
