Back in July, Stardock announced Elemental: Reforged, a remaster of its troubled strategy game series that began in 2010. The new release is aiming to combine and elevate the entire experience for modern systems. Today, the company announced a release date for its early access release, with the project landing on October 23, 2025.
The sandbox 4X game has been upgraded to 64-bit, which, according to the studio, had been one of the biggest constraints of the original release.
"In Elemental, every character is unique. Every unit, every animal, etc. doesn’t just have its own stats, but even looks unique,” said Bradley Wardell, CEO of Stardock and designer of Elemental: Reforged. “Back then, having a game where players could design units, build family dynasties, terraform the terrain, go on quests was just too much to fit in memory in a stable way."
The studio went on to release three games set in the universe: Elemental War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King. Reforged is blending the systems of the trio into a single entity, rebuilding the original concept Stardock had envisioned for the experience back in the day.
“Each game had certain key features that the others couldn’t fit. For instance, War of Magic has family dynasties where characters could get married, have children and the children visibly carried a blending of the parents. That meant even trolls and humans could have children. Probably best not to dwell too much on that,” said Wardell. “For Fallen Enchantress we focused on detailed unit stats and well-paced tactical combat. For Sorcerer King we had crafting and quests.”
The company said today that it was not planning to go for an early access route when it announced Elemental: Reforged. However, fan reactions to the announcement had made the studio offer the remaster a little earlier during development to get feedback and see what the community wants from it going forward.
Elemental: Reforged early access is releasing on Steam on October 23. We also interviewed Stardock CEO and founder Brad Wardell about the game and its development recently, read that over here.
Disclaimer: Neowin"s relationship to Stardock