Elderborn mashes-up old-school design principles with modern-day light souls-like mechanics. It draws inspiration from classic shooters like the Doom series, Quake, or Unreal. While presenting the gameplay in first person-perspective it focuses on skill-based melee combat and world exploration not unlike the Souls series and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Imagine a dungeon, a dungeon full of evil and corruption that needs to be put down back to sleep. A mysterious ancient ruin full of deadly traps, vicious monsters, and omnipresent death. Now visualize yourself - you're a warrior, you're huge, and you certainly know how to fight.

When it comes to the game’s story, Elderborn’s creators obviously point towards Robert E. Howard’s Conan saga, but admit that everything from Tarzan and Sláine comic books, He-Man cartoons, b-movies, down to heavy metal album cover art form the 80s and 90s was also a huge influence. The story follows a heroic quest of a lonesome champion of the barbarian tribes, who ventures into the forbidden ruins of an ancient, megalithic city to seek the secret of eternal youth. It takes the player from the very bottom of caverns and catacombs, up to the highest towers of the mysterious city - and beyond - as the tale unfolds.

The game is also a tribute to heavy metal in its epic, heroic power-metal variety. The original soundtrack, however, does not shy away from modern electronic beats infusion, as well as the use of such exotic instruments as the Armenian duduk and Turkish oud and zurna. These unobvious accents help to capture the uniqueness of the game’s ancient middle-east setting.

The in-development version has been available on Steam Early Access since October 2018, and the creators mention invaluable creative input from the game’s community.

The title, priced at $14.99, will offer a replayable single-player experience, that takes 7-9 hours to complete. Started as a two-person project, it has been in development by a team of up to seven people for over four years.

Bringing the game out of Steam Early Access we’ll be expanding content and adding final polish to our our souls-lite FPP melee title:

The third and final gameplay location will be added, providing closure to the story

• A set of new cut-scenes will replace the current ones (yay, a new story intro!)
• New weapons will be added to your arsenal
• A lot more unlockable codex entries will give you new insight to the game's lore
• More music will be introduced (also to appear in the digital soundtrack DLC)
• Gameplay balancing and tweaks - majorly based on your feedback!
• & more!

Fans of light souls-like gameplay, heavy metal esthetics, and FPP melee should mark the 30th of January, 2020 in their calendars, and wishlist the game on Steam, not to miss the full release!

Ready to take on the challenge that will bring back your best memories of heroic fantasy classics? Well, in that case - welcome to Elderborn.

Players will love Elderborn if:

• they’re suckers for skill-based melee combat and subscribers of the GIT GUD philosophy of gaming
• they’re sick of procedurally-generated content and for a change they’d like to explore extensive, hand-designed, devious dungeons
• they feel that ending a life of an enemy with a well-placed kick is something that’s been missing from their life
• they always wanted to find out how DOOM would feel if it had swords and a warhammer instead of guns
• they miss the old-school feel of a game that does not hold their hand
• they pray at the altars of Dio, Lemmy and other mighty Gods of Metal

Elderborn is coming to PC on January 20, 2020, with console versions to follow later in 2020.