A Year in Ultima Inspired Projects: 2017 in Review
During this past year, a number of projects came to light, were started, or even saw releases. Each of projects on this list are closely inspired by the Ultima games, often the early games within the series. Retro gaming is certainly becoming quite popular in recent years.
The total count for 2017 of active inspired projects totaled 15 with some having releases/demos, so check them all out below.
This old school RPG is styled based on the early Ultima games but include a number of features common from later Ultimas such as advanced scripting, dialogue trees, extensive text, and more involved and developed systems and locations. This RPG will boast a large, open world with non-linear gameplay.
This project seems to be quite far along already, but share little posted progress since early 2017.
This turn-based strategy, rogue-like RPG built by Slashie Dragon. It allows players to explore 5 ancient realms as one of eight classes. It is also a rogue-like, which means that every playthrough will be different with new places to explore with different challenges and surprises. In 2017, this project received its complete release to both Steam and IOS.
The project that sprang up from the former developers of Ultima IX redemption. Corven is a project that seeks to create “a story-driven, single-player, interactive open-world adventure-RPG” set inside an original world with some inspiration by the Ultima Series. This project started late in 2016 and has since released some media including music and character portraits. Their work this past year including world-building and story elements of the starting island, developing skill, combat, and interaction systems.
This Commodore 64 RPG by Arkanix Labs takes inspiration from Questron, Legacy of the Ancients, the Legend of Blacksilver, and the early Ultimas. News posts are rare, but their forum is quite active with regular posting to a variety of forums throughout 2017. A preview download has provided in 2012.
This project by GoldenFlame is a spiritual prequel to Ultima 1 and built as a browser-based tiled RPG. By March of 2017, a demo of the game was released with a number of updates based on user responses. Since then, a number of features have been implemented including experience and karma systems along with significant progress of NPC scheduling and day/night cycles.
This retro pixel RPG was originally released in 2014 for iPad with a release in the Mobile stores in 2016. In September of 2017, a PC/Mac/Linux version was released on STEAM after years of continued development and improvement on mobile systems.
This MMORPG is inspired by Utima Online and built within the Unigine Engine. Since late 2016, news updates have been exclusive to their Facebook page. Towards the end of the year, the project was gearing up towards an Alpha Test build of the client side system.
This fantasy RPG set in the wild west is being built to run on both Apple II and C64 systems as well as modern platforms. In July of 2017, the project had reached beta testing to a closed group. At present, they are actively progressing through their beta-testing and improvements.
The project is a sequel to the Ultima 2-inspired, mobile RPG Lowlander released in 2015. This sequel was released in the Summer of 2017 on mobile platforms. The game boosts 16 hours of main story with large world to explore and expansive dungeons.
This old-school CRPG styled and inspired by Ultima 3 and Wizardry includes classless characters, a party system, a rich skill tree, a large open-world, and a non-linear story. The project was released in 2016 and has been updated multiple times since release culminating in a 2.0 version released in 2017.
This project is an arena fighting game inspired by Ultima Online and World of Warcraft PvP duels. This particular project will be a mage dueling PvP experience. There was little news in 2017 until October in which the developer Erik Ashcraft is combining a variety of prototype components into the main code branch. They also lost a developer but gained a new game designer.
The project is a sword-and-sorcery CRPG based on the RPGs from the Apple II era and built for that system. Work continued steadily throughout 2017 with a release expected in December 2018. The engine is practically complete and much of the remaining work is developing and completing the content. At present an 8-bit is being worked on with a 16-bit version planned after the 8-bit release.
In 2017, this project was started by Fregas Baratis. It is a Unity game styled like the 2D Ultimas in an effort to learn Unity game programming. The game thus far has basic map movement, entering/exiting towns/dungeons, a basic HUD, tile animations, and player-following camera. Work was continued in October after a break.
This project by Slashing Dragon and Exodus Destiny Dragon was started as a crowdfunded classic computer RPG creation kit. The game is creating an Ultima 6 like game engine to allow users to create 90s-style RPGs. As of November 2017, combat is nearly complete, progress continues on level transitions and chunked world model, talking module, and inventory system (plus pick up/drop functionality. During 2017, multiple dev stream videos were released updating on the development of various features. With the end of 2017, work continues to push forward an Alpha version as well as more basic public developer version for devs to start building scenarios.
Released late in 2017, this game is an 8-bit sci-fi RTS for the C64. Though it is an RTS, the HUD and style is reminiscent of Ultima 4 game. The game is a sequel to PlanetX released some years ago for the Commodore VIC-20.
Unknown Realm: The Siege Perlious
This 8-bit commercial RPG for PC and C64 by Stirring Dragon Games started with amazing crowdfunding success early in the year and reached well over $135,000 beyond many of its stretch goals. The game when finished will include open world exploration, a non-linear plot, fast/turn-based combat, keyword highlight dialogue, multiple NPCs and communicative monsters, and a unique skill-based character system. During 2017, the project received Greenlit status on Steam, significant progress towards development of pledge extras, there were continued updates throughout the year regarding progress on art, manual illustrations, and a professional score for the game. The game currently is slated for a release in Spring of 2018 with a presentation at GDC in March.
The year 2017 has certainly been an amazing year for both categories of projects. The releases and progress being made this past year is encouraging for the prospects of 2018. So check out the projects and releases on these two lists and vote for your favorites at the site poll before the poll closes.
First Age of Update
Forgot to add the links.
Revenge of the Update
Unknown Realm was added to the list. Note that due to Stirring wishes, the game is not included in the annual project poll. Also I moved “The Dark Unknown” higher in the list so it is more alphabetically placed.
How could you forget Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous
It wasn’t on the list for 2017.
Thanks for thinking of Unknown Realm! 🙂
We opted out of the poll last year because Unknown Realm is not a “fan project” related to Ultima and is not a derivative work of the Ultima series in any way (although, like many RPGs, it is inspired by Ultima, but probably not in the way you’d think). It’s potentially problematic for any new game to be labeled as a “fan project” of any well-protected and well-established IP brand.
This year, as others have pointed out, the poll includes both “fan projects” and some “Ultima-inspired” projects with no clear definitions of how those are being determined. We weren’t asked about the poll at all this year…I personally think it muddies the water to include commercial standalone games in the same poll as “derivative works” hobby projects (remakes, etc). Currently it’s a mixed bag with bigger commercial releases being excluded for some reason. As demonstrated in the comments, the “rules” are still extremely arbitrary and subjective. For these reasons, we’re okay with being left off the list/poll again. 😉
I kind of figured that the request to be left off the list was to be carried forward into this year. Though I suppose I should actually have asked. My apologies!
I am also very much missing Unknown Realm on the list!
There really needs to be a clear set of criteria for how the Codex is defining “Ultima Inspired Projects” because this list is all over the place. Arguably, the biggest Ultima-inspired project out there right now, Shroud of the Avatar (the “Spiritual Successor to Ultima”) is not on the list? Not to mention Underworld Ascendant and IronOak’s For The King which were both inspired by the Ultima series…Why aren’t these games on the list?? I’m sure there are even more missing if you’re including any game that draws inspiration from the Ultima series (aka all RPGs), but the ones I mentioned above are the most immediately obvious absences on the list. It seems like there should either be a strict “non-commercial projects only” rule or there should at least be transparency about how games/projects are being selected for the list.
By the way, who is writing up these descriptions for the games anyway? Were these provided by the teams themselves or just pulled together from stuff someone found on the Internet?
You’re right, there does need to me more definition as to what constitutes an “Inspired” work. If you have time to draft a proposal for such a standard, I’d be happy to read it.
One general rule we try to follow is that, for the purposes of this poll, no commercial products are allowed. So that would rule out Shroud, Divinity, and a few others. Ananias is still listed because there is a free version, though obviously there is also a paid version of that game, and it’s not easy to separate the two in this context.
As for this list, it was pulled together by Iceblade, and I’m more than a little grateful for his efforts.
The descriptions were an attempt to provide a quick summary of the project/game using a mixture of project entries on the Codex and descriptions of the game as assessed from the material on the project website. If a description is in error, please state what is specifically in error, and I will revise the description.
I do not have much more time than WtF does, so prepared quickly with an eye towards a brief but accurate description (based on information from the creator’s website) for each project.
The projects were based on the list provided for the site poll with the exception of Unknown Realm due to high demand for a year-in-review summary.
One final note is that in many ways, Shroud and Ascendant are Spiritual Sequels to the Ultima rather than inspired by the Ultimas.
FYI @iceblade – Unknown Realm is being made by “Stirring Dragon Games” which is a business, not “Stirring” or “Stirring Dragon”…the Ultima Dragon known as “Stirring Dragon” is not the only one on this team. 😉