After 17 years, a slightly confusing pre-alpha, a fat Kickstarter, and one false sequel, the true follow-up to legendary 2007 release Elona is out in the wild. Roguelike sandbox RPG Elin launched on Steam in early access last year, and it’s gone down quite well with both Japanese and English-speaking fans, amassing over 4,700 94% positive user reviews at the time of writing.
Elin, not unlike fellow roguelike RPG Caves of Qud, which was also officially released last year after a 17-year wait, is one of those games that combines so many genres and experiences that it can be hard to describe succinctly. It is loud-and-proud weird, dense as a neutron star, and almost competitively Japanese.
The topline on Steam is this: “A sandbox, open-world RPG based on roguelike gameplay.” That gets you most of the way there, but the next bullet is also important: “Live your life, survive, craft, build and manage bases and towns, enjoy housing, fishing, theft, music, farming, livestock breeding, childbirth, setting up shops, tourism, and much more.”
Ignoring the fact that I don’t know if childbirth is something you necessarily enjoy, we can reasonably call this a tile-based life sim with heaps of procedural and handcrafted content split between all walks of life, from adventuring to farming to shop management to base building. I told you it wasn’t going to be succinct. It’s a seemingly boundless creativity toy set in a charming but dangerous fantasy world rendered in endearing pixel art, and it has a Dwarf Fortress-rivaling ability to generate absurd new sentences. Naturally, this makes for primo Steam review reading.
“10 minutes in, I accidentally ate the corpse of my kitten and now have -5 karma,” writes haybug.
“They had to nerf breastfeeding because at some point the meta was to start a war quest, milk the boss mid-combat, and feed it to your pets for an insane amount of levels and stats,” reports Minkyew. I looked this up, obviously, and it is at least partly true. “The level used to calculate effects during breastfeeding has been changed from (50 + training skill) to (20 + training skill),” a previous patch explains. Of course. Carry on.
“If you like Stardew Valley but hate yourself then this is worth a shot,” as Coley D puts it.
“Here’s a breakdown of all the mechanics I completely understand,” quips TrustworthySpy, followed by a telling chasm of emptiness.
Elin was technically released in alpha at the end of 2023 following a Kickstarter campaign which raised over $400,000 (by current Yen to USD conversions). Somewhat confusingly, that Kickstarter called Elin a prequel, while its Steam page bills it as a “successor” and “sequel.” It is, as I understand it, technically a prequel. A pre-squel, if you will.
The game’s Steam page lists a November 1, 2024 launch, which is when it came out for real, contrary to what the 30-odd patches preceding its February 1, 2024 alpha status report might suggest. Since that last dev update, according to the game’s Steam news feed and SteamDB records, nothing of significance has changed, with no major posts or updates since November 1.
But that’s only in the main game. In that November post, Lafrontier said “we look forward to continually updating and refining the game as we work toward its full release,” with updates coming to the “Nightly” beta branch first and then the main game “as they’re ready.” Sure enough, Nightly has gotten so many updates that there’s a whole changelog archive collating them, including the aforementioned critical nerf. Elin is notably expected to stay in early access for “approximately one year, two years at the most.”
One thing that made Elin’s road to launch a bit rockier was the reveal of Elona 2, a self-described “pixel art x isekai x adventure RPG” from publisher Hong Kong Kunpan Culture Entertainment, which Noa says had no right or permission to use the Elona IP. In August, as Automaton reported, Noa said Elona 2 is not related to Elona and that he declined a request from Kunpan to use the name. “I’m an independent developer and have no strength to fight this,” Noa said. This is not to be confused with Elona Mobile, a legitimate mobile port created separately with Noa’s blessing.
Meet the Japanese solo dev who spent 15 years making the bizarre game that’s secretly one of the highest-rated JRPGs on Steam and a personal favorite of mine.
