Archmage RisesDefiance Game Studio

DISCLAIMER: This game is currently in active development. While fully playable, some of the features listed below may not yet be available in the current build of Archmage Rises but will be coming as we develop and release them. We are highly dedicated to the continued development of this game and release new content and features regularly. Please see our game's development roadmap here.

Prepare to immerse yourself in the freedom that you can normally only get out of a tabletop RPG. Empowered with magic, you will create your own story, and experience real consequences from the decisions you make. Will you be the world’s savior . . . or its destroyer? The choice is yours.

Key features:

• Every life is intimate, unique, and memorable. Feel each playthrough deeply.
• Explore a true open world teeming with life, choice, and consequence
• Immerse yourself in a player-driven story that evolves based on your decisions
• Unleash dangerous spells that can have game-changing consequences
• Cast magic to overcome obstacles and explore challenging dungeons
• Procedural world generation featuring in-depth political, economic, and military simulations
• Experience a never-before-seen religion/spirituality/worship system

A New Kind of RPG:

• It’s Your Story – Born with great potential, what will you do with it? Adventure, politic, research, grow in power, but one day you will die by natural causes, ending your story. See your impact on the world at your funeral.

• Gain in Power – Explore dungeons, discover artifacts of ancient power, visit arcane libraries all to gain skill in 5 distinct schools of magic. Customize you own spells through research.

• Total Freedom – Make good, evil, or choices in between. Use your gold to fund an orphanage, or keep prisoners in your mage tower and let them rot. Use your power and influence to bring peace between warring nobles or to instigate a feud. Just like pen & paper, it's all up to you.

• Actually Be in a Medieval Fantasy World – Swear an oath of loyalty to nobles, invest in town shops, move homes, court a love interest (or several). An unprecedented level of presence in the world.

• Recruit Hirelings – Gather your entourage who can assist you in battle and increase your power, as long as you keep them well paid and taken care of.

• Build a Mage Tower – Use your power and wealth to build an intellectual respite of research or an impenetrable tower of power, and anything in between

• Unparalleled NPC Interaction – Every NPC is a distinct person of depth. Learn their personality and motivation, conduct business, turn things romantic, or kill them. NPCs remember every interaction and even spread news (sometimes inaccurately) about you.

• Craft and Enchant – Create your own equipment and specialize how you please: battle, politics, research, and more. Craft potions in your mage tower workshop to assist you with your goals, or sell them at a profit.

• Inspired by Raistlin Majere of Dragonlance – The core concept is to go from humble beginnings to becoming the most influential and powerful mage in the world? Dragonlance fans will find much to enjoy.

• Procedural World Generation – Every game generates a new world with dozens of towns, thousands of NPCs, a unique history, treasures, items, historical characters, and monster lairs.

• The World Progresses and Ages – With or without your involvement. Kingdoms rise and fall, towns grow or shrink, monster threats grow and expand. Watch young NPCs grow old, get married, start their own families, bear their own children, and eventually die, all in one player lifetime.

• Choice, Consequence, Emergent Story – As the world simulates along, your every NPC interaction is factored into it. Killed the inn keeper? The inn will close and his family will hate you. Indiscriminately divorce an NPC? Maybe they’ll send thugs after you out of scorn.

• Realistic Supply-Demand Economy – Towns have primary businesses which consume goods and produce others. Goods travel along road systems through AI traders. Bandits interrupt supply runs and can lead to your favorite brew no longer available in the local tavern. Get involved in trading and starting new businesses in towns, or ignore it entirely.

• Revolutionary Blight System Creates Realistic Quests – A population of giant spiders can establish a nest near a town. Townsfolk will go missing. Over time, it escalates even to the point where the town falls under attack. This affects NPCs, trade, and population unrest. NPCs will be aware of the problem and request your help with it for varying rewards. Don’t act quickly enough? Watch out for AI heroes and rival mages accepting and completing quests too!

Archmage Rises is being developed for PC and Mac and is playable on Steam Deck.

What early players are saying:

"As a long time enjoyer of Dwarf Fortress's Adventure Mode, I LOVE this game..."

"...as a fan of Dragonlance, indie games and open-world RPG's this one really hits all the notes for me."

"It feels like DF adventure mode had a baby with DnD and it scratches an itch I didn't even realize I had."

"What a delightful game! It does have a learning curve!!! Once you've gotten the basics and it begins to make sense. It is literally Old School D&D, I know, I played the original 3 book series!"

"This game grows from month to month, and it is meeting the promises the developers put out on it one step at a time."