11x Studios, the developers of UltimaX, after encountering some legal troubles with Electronic Arts, went silent for a while, before rebranding their game as Minstrel (something of a return to form, since the original title of the project was The Minstrel’s Fable). The shift in name was also accompanied by a shift in focus: whereas UltimaX was being built as an MMORPG (albeit in the style of an Ultima 4 or Ultima 5), Minstrel will be a single-player game..though a co-op mode may eventually be added.

With that in mind, there’s news today of a new project website for Minstrel…and not just that:

We have launched the “Minstrel” website!!! Minstrel is a classic role-playing game that plays much like the earlier Ultima games (namely Ultima 4 and 5). Go to the Minstrel website to learn more: https://minstrel1.com/.

Ultimax is now Minstrel! We will be shutting down the Ultimax website in the coming days (thanks to EA). Sorry, it’s taken us a little while to get the new website rebranded and launched, but it’s finally done! We are still hard at work coding the new game client. We are porting a lot of the Ultimax code over to Minstrel – no need to reinvent the wheel. So, we have a huge head start!

We are also creating two modes of gameplay: 80s Classic and 90s Classic. If you want the original “Ultima” vibe, play 80s. Or if you rather play with more color on the screen and have it look more Zelda-like, go 90s. Check out our “About” page for a screenshot of these two modes.

In the next release of Minstrel, you’ll be able to create a character and walk around the world map. You might even have a town to explore. We want to get to a point where you can see that it’s a real work-in-progress and not just a concept in our minds or on a whiteboard – like we did on Ultimax (for those of you that were able to play-test Ultimax).

Go here to check out the new website: https://minstrel1.com/.

To give you an idea of what both game modes mentioned above look like, 11x Studios have posted a comparison screenshot:

The Minstrel website also contains some information about the game’s upcoming Kickstarter campaign, including concepts for the game’s box and its various contents.

Because it brings over a lot of the technology developed for UltimaX, Minstrel is already somewhat complete. Map line-of-sight, movement across the map, and town maps have all been completed already, and you can expect to see a lot of UI elements brought over from UltimaX as well. The game client can actually be fired up on the Minstrel website right now, though as yet there’s not a playable version of the game to be found therein (title screens for both 80s Mode and 90s Mode can be checked out, though).

The First Age of Update: If you had an account at the UltimaX site previously, which you’d have used to access their playable demo, you may be interested to know that your account will be migrated to Minstrel in the near future, according to an update to this forum thread.