Goldenflame Dragon has, at long last, put Chronicles of Ellusus I: The Dark Unknown up on Steam, and he is aiming for a mid-December release there. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that this is the first the Codex has written about the game since April 2025, when he was looking for beta testers.

A good deal has happened in the meantime. In mid-September, Goldenflame reported on the game’s Facebook page that he had completed the game a second time and was stitching together a trailer for the Steam store page. By early October, in version 0.11.10, he had playtested all four elemental planes, which he described as some of the last remaining optional content, and was down to a single untested spell. A bout of COVID then held things up, but on November 4th he was back in the home stretch. The Steam page was under review at that point, and the launch build will be Windows-only at first, with Mac and Linux versions promised in an early patch. He was also still taking last-minute beta testers, if anyone is interested in helping out with that.

The store page went live this week, and he marked the occasion this way:

Finally, finally, there is a store page on Steam. So many hoops had to be jumped through. I encourage you to wishlist it!

The current project is rewriting the Almanac and finishing the Player Reference Guide, and then I will learn how to post a build to Steam so I can release next month! It’s finally happening!

Chronicles of Ellusus I: The Dark Unknown is a single-player retro RPG and a long-running homage to the early Ultima games. The Codex has a project entry with a couple of now-quite-dated demo builds available. Steam lists the game as coming in December 2026; you can wishlist it there now.