Journals
Dev Journal
We like sandbox games. We are not interested in telling you a story. We are interested in you creating your own stories through gameplay, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have lore - lore that has published books about them and decades of development in them. Today, I want to share a little bit of the backstory for Elemental. Note: minor spoilers mentioned . In the Beginning There were the Mithrilar . These were extremely powerful guardians with no native shape or substance. Placed in... [read more]
Dev Journal
Let's Talk About 2010 I'm going to be straight with you - Elemental: War of Magic didn't look good in 2010, and Elemental: Fallen Enchantress didn’t really improve on that. Time has not been kind to it. The Elemental games were our first non-space game at Stardock. We'd been making Galactic Civilizations and publishing Sins of a Solar Empire , and we thought "how hard could it be to make a fantasy game?" Turns out, pretty hard. Terrain. Animation. Magic. The biggest challenge wa... [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #3: The Great String System Overhaul
How Fixing 15-Year-Old Code Finally Opens Elemental to the World By Brad Wardell August 2025 Localization: How to double your market size Here's a business truth that haunts game developers: English speakers represent only 40% of the strategy 4X gaming market. The other 60%? They're playing games in German, Chinese, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, and so many others. For 15 years, Elemental was locked out of that 60%. That was because back in 2008, when we were developing the g... [read more]
Stardock Entertainment Announcements
Announcing: Massive Scale RTS Game Ashes of the Singularity II
Highly anticipated sequel features larger battles, advanced units, and a new campaign to lead humanity against hostile AI takeover Wishlist Ashes II Now Stardock and Oxide Games today announced Ashes of the Singularity II , the highly anticipated sequel to the groundbreaking, massive-scale RTS that redefined real-time strategy gaming a decade ago. Set to release in 2026, exactly ten years after the original, the game invites players to engage in strategic battles of unprecedented scale,... [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #2: Help Shape the Game
Let’s start with where things currently stand at Stardock in our remastering and reimagining of Elemental. We have ported the underlying engine and code base to 64-bit. We have upgraded the graphics engine to DirectX 11. We have brought over the Dynasty system from War of Magic (yes, this game had full on families, dynasties, and magical breeding). We have brought over the crafting system and global inventory from Sorcerer King. We have reexported the original textures at m... [read more]
Stardock Entertainment Announcements
Epic Fantasy Strategy Game, Elemental Returns as Elemental: Reforged
Stardock Entertainment announced today Elemental: Reforged , a definitive re-imagining of the ambitious fantasy 4X strategy series Elemental . Integrating the strongest elements from Elemental: War of Magic , Fallen Enchantress , and Sorcerer King , Elemental: Reforged finally brings to life the comprehensive vision originally set out nearly two decades ago. First conceived in 2008 following Stardock’s successes with Galactic Civilizations II and ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #1: Elemental: Reforged
Once upon a time… In 2008, right after we released Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire , we at Stardock felt pretty good about ourselves. We had assembled an amazing team of people that could make amazing games and we thought there was nothing we couldn’t do. Hubris attracts Nemesis. With space conquered, we set our eyes on making Fantasy Civilizations. It would be half Master of Magic and half what we had learned from making Sins and GalCiv. The game would be... [read more]