Barring a miracle, The Elder Scrolls 6 won’t arrive in 2025. As this year marks 14 years of Skyrim, it’s understandable to feel an itch for Bethesda’s brand of open-world RPG that even the best mods can’t scratch. Enter Ardenfall. The new sandbox adventure from Seattle-based Spellcast Studios is inspired by the Elder Scrolls games, and aims to really lean in on the impact you leave behind. Set to arrive in early access this year, you can get an early glimpse of it right now on Steam.
While Obsidian brought something new to the formula last month, Lauren’s Avowed review lamented its lack of real consequences, and that’s where Spellcast Studios wants to shine. Ardenfall presents a stunningly stylized open-world game in an immersive land that reacts and shifts dynamically based on the decisions you make. Character, questlines, regional politics and economies, and even more can change in response to your actions.
This new indie game might not stretch quite to Bethesda’s scale, but it’s still impressive. With three major settlements across three regions of the world and over 150 characters that you can interact with and talk to, there’s a lot to discover. Crucially, every NPC moves on their own schedule, and you affect their lives dramatically – yes, you can even kill any living being in the game. Want to go one step further? Resurrect them and have them serve your will as a twisted necromancer.
Ardenfall’s diverse and reactive world begins at character creation, where your chosen race, attributes, and traits can affect everything from dialogue choices and combat skills to how much you’ll be trusted (or distrusted) by those you meet. Your travels will bring you into contact with all manner of perspectives, cultures, and beliefs, and you’ll have to determine the best way to approach each situation based on your skills.
Quests offer lots of options for branching paths, and can lead to various outcomes in many cases. In true Elder
You can explore in first-person or third-person as you prefer, but combat always shifts into the first-person perspective. Choose whether you’ll stick to classic options such as swords and throwing knives, opt for the likes of powerful spells or throwable potions that can debuff or damage your foes, or even lean into strategies such as summoning great beasts to charge into battle on your behalf.
Spellcast even teases the option to magically “fling yourself into the sky,” although I’m yet to figure out exactly how I might use that effectively. It certainly brings to mind those iconic moments of being smashed by a Skyrim giant, however. If you’re on the hunt for that Elder Scrolls fix, Ardenfall certainly feels like it might be the answer.
Ardenfall is set to launch via Steam Early Access in 2025. There’s also a free demo you can download and try right now for a brief glimpse of the world, although Spellcast notes that the build is from 2022 and, as such, the final game “has evolved significantly” since then.
After a more immediate solution? Try one of the best games like Skyrim in 2025. We’ve gone one step further and rounded up the best RPGs on PC right now, too, so you’ll be spoiled for choice as we wait for the Elder Scrolls 6 release date.
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