Mark Lemmert — also known as Nox Ffred Dragon — has formally announced the release date for 6502 Workshop’s long-in-development retro RPG, Nox Archaist:

Hello friends! The retro computer game I’ve been working on developing for the last 5 years (Nox Archaist) is finally ready for release. The big day is December 12, 2020!

If you’d like to check it out and see what I’ve been up to, here is a link to the Game Trailer

Nox Archaist will be available as a Digital Download and a Collector’s Boxed Set including an old school cloth map, printed manual and more!

The team at 6502 have a bit more to say over at the game’s official website:

On December 12, 2020, all backers will receive a link to the Digital Download version of the game! But that’s not all, on this date we will also begin shipping physical rewards to backers who selected Option 2 (Early shipment with labelled blank floppies) on the survey we sent via email on November 16th.

We estimate 2-7 days for backers in the United States to receive their physical rewards, and 3-8 weeks for backers in all other countries. You will receive an email from pirateship.com when your rewards ship.

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It has been a long and incredible journey, and we hope that this milestone is as exciting for you as it is for us. With the release of Nox Archaist, the journey continues as each of you get to play the game for the first time. We look forward to interacting with you, and invite you to join the backer community Discord server where you will be able to talk to the developers, testers, and fellow players. We are sure that you will have plenty of questions to ask, and tips, tricks, and cool discoveries to share!

The game trailer mentioned in the first quote can be viewed above. It’s an enjoyable nod to 8-bit games of yestercentury…which is what Nox Archaist aims to homage. As you may recall, Lemmert had previously described the project as an attempt to explore where 8-bit gaming would have gone had 16-bit processors not come along when they did. And it would seem that Nox Archaist manages to do a few things within the limitations of 8-bit systems that will surprise and amaze players when the game finally drops in a couple of weeks.