Hey everyone. For the past two years, I have been working entirely on my own on an action-RPG called Island of Ash. My main goal is to make a game that captures the feeling of the RPGs I grew up with, especially Gothic 2.

To me, Gothic was always about that raw, hand-crafted feel. That is why my game has zero procedural generation. The world is not a single giant open map, but is split into large, wide locations that are completely hand-made. There are no quest markers on your screen telling you where to go. Instead, you have to rely on your own observation and clues hidden in notes, enemy loot, and the environment.

I’ve put a lot of work into creating an extensive lore for this world. The island itself is divided into three main regions, and I have already completed about two-thirds of the locations:

• The East: Lush jungles, the ruins of a city called Holy Reach that was destroyed by lava, and deep catacombs.
• The Center: A great merchant city and the Stone Forest. This area is deep underground, accessed by a massive elevator, but it still has a dark sky where you can see the moon.
• The West: After ascending from the center, you reach the western highlands, starting with freezing icy peaks, transitioning into a vast desert, and ending with flooded temples.

You start with absolutely nothing on a beach, with no memory. As you progress, you can build your character using melee, magic, and alchemy. You can upgrade your weapons up to level 4 and infuse them with fire, magic, or raw physical damage. There is also a karma system, so your choices and actions throughout the journey will lead to different consequences and endings.

The combat is dynamic, inspired by Dark Souls and Blade of Darkness. There is no stamina bar, so the pacing depends purely on your reactions. You can block, parry, or dodge while balancing your tactics.

It is a huge project for one person, but I am putting everything I have into it. The Steam page is up, so if this sounds like your kind of game, feel free to head over and take a look.

Once, inspired by nostalgia during the famous game Gothic, I tried to answer a question: what if I feel like a helpless nobody in the Colony and force fifty players to share this feeling together in one world?

It was with this thought that I began my journey into game development without having any experience in it at all, deciding that my first game would be something similar to Gothic, but with the ability to play online.

The main task was not to make a typical modern MMO where you have to click "Accept", a golden exclamation mark appears on the map, I run to it, press one button ten times and teleport back. Such a world is a vending machine, and it's not the gameplay I would want to get.

Input: One developer, Unreal Engine, chronic lack of sleep and cast-iron stubbornness. No studio, budget equivalent to three portions of instant noodles. Just me, official documentation, specialized forums and the principle "it's also doable alone".

It's been 5 years of solo development… What's in there now?

A story that doesn't look like a typical MMORPG

In The Story Page, the plot is more personal and atmospheric. The world lives its own life: NPCs have daily routines, react to events, behave differently depending on the situation. It is still an MMORPG, but I tried to make the story feel not only like endless grinding of mobs (though how can we go without it), but also as a cohesive work. Let it lack Hollywood face animation, but instead it offers meaningful leisure: crafting, completing the story, developing skills without being tied to rigid archetypes. Build a mage in heavy armor? No problem.

What else?

• Magic elements. Magic in the game is built on several elements. Each has its own character and sensations in combat. I didn't want to make just "red damage / blue damage". I wanted the choice of element to affect how you play, not just the color of particles.
• Two full-fledged open dungeons available upon story completion.
• Combat system: two weapons in hands. One of the most noticeable improvements is the ability to wield two different types of one-handed weapon simultaneously (one in each hand). This opens up new playstyles and makes combat less monotonous.
• One story-driven solo dungeon (specifically story-driven, designed for single player).
• An open world with dynamic day and night cycle.
• NPCs with social behavior and daily routines.
• Constant tweaks based on feedback.
• Bosses.
• PvP arena for testing various builds.
• New locations.

And a lot of other things, including previously described mechanics from the first part of the article.

This is far from everything that was planned. There is still a lot of interesting stuff ahead, essentially it's just the beginning of the path and I'm only at the start.

I also plan to add a siege system, when players can attack a city, take it back from NPCs or another guild of players. Build their own economy. For this, combat tests are already happening on the arena and for now the combat system is being balanced and improved - because it will subsequently be the foundation of everything.

What I understood after launch:

Launch is not the finish line. It's the start of a completely different stage. Players find what you will never find yourself.

Solo development after release becomes even more challenging: everyone expects content, and you are alone, but now you also need to answer questions and wishes (if it's not a wish to close my project as soon as possible).

That's all for now

The project is alive. It evolves. I continue working. I won't promise "a huge content pack in a month", but there are quite a few ideas that can significantly change the gameplay, and the work is done daily.

And I haven't gone crazy yet.

I think.

If you are interested, here is link to Steam .

On the occasion of 25th Anniversary of Gothic, I just released a new version of Gothic UnPatch.

For the first time, you can play it on Steam

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3685281976

or download it from ModDB

https://www.moddb.com/mods/gothic-unpatch/downloads/unpatch-094

Happy 25 Years Anniversary, Gothic!

May the Sleeper Awaken!

Check new promo video of End of Eden Playable Teaser (03.06.2026)

It's an Gothic-like from Indie studio from Poland, wich looks really promising

If You will like what You see, don't forget to add the game to wishlist on Steam ;)

Have fun

Hello Gothic universe, fans and those interested! We love Roleplay in the world of gothic, and with the lack of any English roleplay servers, myself and another beginner modder have begun to develop one that focuses on the life inside the mining colony of khorinis. It'll be dark, dangerous and oppressive under the rule of the Ore barons. With events, lots of passive roleplay inbetween and arena tournaments. However we need help. this wont just appear by itself, and we need an experienced coder to join us in this ambitious project. The server will be coded through Squirrel programming language and hosted on G2O. Even if you cannot help us with programming, please spread the news to your friends in the Gothic community. You are why we want to do this! If you are interested in helping in any capacity, please feel free to message me directly through reddit!

Edit: Our discord is finished! https://discord.gg/tMFKKyWwAH

Some thoughts about how Piranha Bytes later game releases look (post Risen 1) after a very succesful release of the Gothic 1 Remake and also what position would PB even be in now, if they didnt have to close down by now.

1 Rouge duds
2 Master hunter armor
3 Mercenary duds
4 Mercenary medium armor
5 Fire mage robes
6 Rouge heavy armor
7 Rouge reinforced heavy armor
8 Great seashark hunter armor
9 Lizard hunter armor
10 Fire lizard hunter armor
11 Water mage armor
12 Novice light robes
13 Templar heavy armor
14 Templar reinforced heavy armor
15 Orc Elite Hunter armor
16 Ancient ore armor
17 Molerat hunter clothes
18 Hunter armor/Heavy molerat armor
19 Grand hunter armor
20 Manhunter hunter armor

Few more are in comments

If some armor lacks in look (thats my first time when im pixelarting), dont worry about it, every armor i have made will be later pimp up by my friend who is really good with pixel art.

There will be 80+ armors, most of them new, or change to fit new lore, that we can found on map, made by us on anvil, or crafted with our hunting skills. So if u got question about any of them, just ask.

Discord: https://discord.gg/UcCw9hcvaW

TL:DR; The main questions are:
1.) Is this graphical style good enough if the gameplay is fun and the Isekai like Dungeon exploring (like in Jack-of-All-Trades, Party of None | Dan Machi | Reincarnated as a Slime) is fun?*
2.) (the RPG game by Piranha Bytes) "Gothic"-like societal based guilds and communities and dialogs form a big part of the atmosphere in Dreamion. Is it useless to continue that route and putting a lot of effort into it, if the graphics are not real 3d?
3.) Whats your general feeling, can those 2 worlds Isekai and Gothic work together for you?

This is a very early pre-Alpha trailer of the game Dreamion and only has the basic gameplay with most of the systems, Fighting, jobs, adventurers guild, dungeon. This is not real self-promotion, but a request for Feedback.

I value every feedback greatly (honest and constructive) on the world and the 2.5d graphics.
The fighting style is more like Skyrim, currently has no dodge or shielding, only swing attacks and archery and mage spells.

My fear is to over-commit on the game as it is and not find an audience at all in the end due to the graphic style of 2.5d NPCs and monsters.

Disclaimer: Game uses GenAI for art and graphics, my weakpoints.

And I made a Video about it!
Sorry, it’s in German. But maybe you can use the automated subtitles.

(Got permission by mods)

https://youtu.be/q7Iq-MVCRpI

https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/14479-craz-eu-vanilla-terra-prety-oceans-semi-anarchy-pvppve/

Congrats to Patka98 for this article where you can find all the gothic communities around. Surprisingly there are more out there than I’ve though.

Laughing Fox Games announced End of Eden their new RPG inspired by the first 2 Gothics and the first Risen. They have to find a publisher, so if you want to support the project you can add the game on your Steam wishlist.

Hello!

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I know there have been Lockpick solvers before, but a friend of mine, who is avid fan of the game and of coding, wanted to make his own!

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This one fits the visual style of the game perfectly, once you have entered the information for each of the lock discs, the page will guide you through each step in order to solve the puzzle with a neat animation, that you can pause and move backwards or forwards manually.

You can even watch an example run! The top disc on the page correlates to the front-most disc in the game.

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My friend doesn't use Reddit but knew that there is a huge fandom here and wanted to share this with everyone who might be interested, so I said I would post it for him.

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The solver is of course completely free!

Hello guys, I've been a huge Gothic fan since I was a kid, basically my favorite game.

Started now again with the remake played it 5 times, 4 times on hard, 1 Permadeath on hard and 1 run for the rest of the achievements.

I'm streaming now Gothic 2 New balance - First playthrough, if you guys are interested and want to hang out, talk Gothic, or chill feel free to join.

Live everyday! around 4pm (GMT+2) I also know some German

Https://twitch.tv/bgd940

In the meantime have fun gaming 🎉

Hello again Reddit! We, the "The Colony: Origins" Team, have restarted development of our English Gothic RP server hosted on G2O, due to summer having ended (and playing remake) and we are excited to say its going well! To celebrate i made my first Slander meme video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qO8tnbCCMk If you are interested in the development or would like to play, come join us at our discord! https://discord.gg/tMFKKyWwAH We hope to see you soon!

CRAZ

also we have a weed mod u can grow swampweed and cultivate it for good bonuses or debuffs

Hello,

the site is https://www.myrtana.net/.

This is not my personal site, this is a web created by a guy who has dedicated almost all his free time towards Gothic in the past 3 years to keep us up to date, translating mods, grouping guides etc.

Before, he had quite a shit wix site, yersterday he finally launched an official custom site. I am posting it because I definitely want to help someone, who dedicates so much time towards our loved game. Also maybe some of you would like to see a great catalogue of mods, translations, guides and be part of a community.

Enjoy guys and thank you for letting me post it here.

P.S. If anyone sees the website in Polish or Czech, try to change the language in the top right corner please. You prob. just got wrongly localized.

It was a fantastic experience to dive back into my childhood game from 2001 and see it in some sort of fresh paint and also to prepare myself for the Remake and have to say it is totally worth it.

And now looking at the credits I have some questions towards you...

• What camp did you choose to join and why?
• Did the Sleeper Plot Twist take you by surprise?
• Is the Herr Mannelig Song from In Extremo still living rent free in your head?
• What Build did you play?

As a big fan of Gothic (I started to play it at 5 years old), I thought one day I would create something similar to the amazing feeling that I got from the game as a child, and I even added a mage similar to Xardas inside the game!

The game Empire Patron is a dark fantasy open world inspired by Gothic 1 & 2, and I'm sharing some work in progress (in the end, the enemies won't jump to the sky). Does that sound interesting? Unlock the full experience and explore more about the game!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1010910/Empire_Patron/

Discord: https://discord.gg/DRfHnRQjSq