Here’s one I didn’t see coming. ChangeNode (who maintains projects on GitHub as synthwave-pixel) has posted a 21-minute video on YouTube showing off a modernized port of Ultima III: Exodus. It’s a TypeScript-based rebuild of the source code that LairWare released back in 2014 for its Mac OS port of the game. ChangeNode’s version plays in a web browser, as well as on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and on the Steam Deck, with full controller support.

Long-time readers may remember the LairWare port from many years ago; this revamping of it keeps all of that history close at hand. Every one of the tile sets LairWare bundled with their game is still here, along with a brand new one. The developer’s design principles are refreshingly firm:

No changes to the core data files – it’s Ultima III.

What has changed is everything around those data files. There’s a new Controller mode inspired by the NES version of Ultima 3, which the game defaults to and which works just as well with a keyboard or touch screen. There’s also an auto-map that fills in as you explore, a quest journal with “just enough in-game hints” to finish without an outside guide, a shared inventory for unequipped gear, and shops that compare their wares against what your party is already carrying. If you’d rather have the 1983 experience, classic difficulty, keyboard commands and the original skins are all easily enabled via the Pause menu.

It’s worth noting that, by the developer’s own account in the video, the port was built with the help of Claude Code. Getting the original code running was evidently the easier part of things, and most of the time ChangeNode spent on this went into UI details and “matters of taste.” The video also touches on Ultima‘s history and the question of rights, which, given who owns Ultima these days, is probably wise.

You can play it in your browser right now, grab installers from the GitHub releases page, or look through the source code, which is MIT-licensed. I’m not hosting mirrors of the releases at the project entry here on the Codex, but you can find links there pointing to the currently-most-recent builds (on GitHub) for each platform.