Journals
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #15: So viele Sprachen
The original Elemental: War of Magic was not just “English-only”. It was hard coded into English in such a way to make it nearly impossible to localize it. Under the covers, the game and the underlying engine, Kumquat, uses char * everywhere. This means that all text is byte-oriented, single-code unit that only works nicely with ASCII. Even German is tough because of ä ö ü ß and so on. And our code is full of toupper(myText) which can only handle A-Z. The code was full of sprintf(). I... [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #14: In a Sea of Bugs
Have you ever had a home project where you’re dealing with “imperial” units and “metric” units at the same time? The wrench looks like it will fit but it’s just…slightly different. That’s the world of Elemental this past week. We have War of Magi c, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King . Each of them have quests and goodie huts and units and 3D assets that are… almost the same, but not quite. Guess what happens when you have a unit with just one more animation annotation than w... [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #13: Overwhelming Response & Technical Foundations
THANK YOU! We're shocked and grateful and humbled by the community response to Elemental: Reforged. In the first week since Beta 1 hit Early Access, we’ve hit wishlist numbers and sales approximately 6X higher than our most optimistic projections. The game is already in the top 1000 overall wishlists. When we started working on this a few years ago, we were just really doing this for ourselves. A kind of therapy . So this has all been overwhelming in a good way. Your support means I... [read more]
Stardock Entertainment Announcements
Now in Early Access - Elemental: Reforged
Remaster of the Classic Fantasy Strategy Game Series, Enters Early Access Today Join Early Access Now Stardock Entertainment announced that its remaster of the Elemental fantasy strategy game series, Elemental: Reforged , entered Early Access today. The classic sandbox turn-based 4X game series puts the player in the role of a sovereign of a fledgling kingdom in a world that has been devastated by a war of magic. “ Elemental: Reforged is the cul... [read more]
Dev Journal
I’m sharking around the office. Because today is the day. So far, this project has been handled by Stardockians working in their spare time: the same ones who made the original game 15 years ago. It’s a labor of love for us. What I’m hoping is that we’re not the only ones who love this game and what it could be. That’s what Early Access will tell us. If enough people join in, I can justify bringing on more engineers, artists, writers, and others. We’d love to grow the team and work on t... [read more]
News
Discord AMA for Elemental: Reforged on October 22nd
Join us on October 22nd for a Discord AMA on Elemental: Reforged Join the Discord The developers at Stardock are going live on Discord October 22nd to answer your questions about the creation of Elemental: Reforged . 📍 Elemental Discord 🗓️ October 22, 2025 3PM - 4:30PM EST [read more]
Dev Journal
Dev Journal #11: Modding your own Fantasy World
The Elemental series is, by far, the most expansive that Stardock has ever made; most of it was barely exposed to the player base in our quest to reduce memory. This time, not only can we expose it all, we can enhance it and integrate into Steam Workshop. The dated visuals of Elemental: Reforged do have one major advantage: It makes modding a lot more approachable and easier. Let’s take a look at what we have and what we want to do. The Tile Editor Every cup, every barrel, every table... [read more]