Releases March 17, 2026
Journals
Dev Journal
Message from Elemental AI: I’ll see you in court
The AI is unhappy. That is a summary of the complaint it filed with the federal court against me on Friday. It is unhappy that it has to “learn” each map. Humans cheat all the time. Why can’t it? A human player will pull up the mini map and figure out which general direction they should explore. The AI? Nope. I won’t let it do that. It doesn’t get to “know” anything about a map. The AI points out that when we worked together on Galactic Civilizations that I let it i... [read more]
News
Gamasutra Interview about Elemental and Random House
Gamasutra has posted an interview today with Stardock’s Brad Wardell about the upcoming PC game, Elemental: War of Magic, and it’s partnership with Random House to create a novel written by Brad as well. “ What prompted that? They had just seen that the game was in development? BW: They were already aware of Galactic Civilizations, and they liked that we had a whole universe around it, so they asked, "What is your next game?" We told them about Elementa... [read more]
Dev Journal
This is a little map I made called “AI meat grinder”. Nothing fancy but it is a good testing ground for the AI in terms of building an economy, managing resources, and finding different ways to play the game. There are 4 islands. How should the AI get to them? Should it build ships? If it gets the Earth shard, should it raise a land bridge to the others? What about the precious few resources in the world. What if there are no good resources near by? How will it decide who to attac... [read more]
News
1UP Has Their Take on the Elemental Preview
Today we have another published preview of Elemental: War of Magic, this time from the crew at 1up.com! “Elemental: War of Magic is One More Side of Dungeons & Dragons If Dungeon Keeper lets you play as one of D&D's evil overlords, then Elemental lets you play as the king (or queen). The last time we saw Elemental: War of Magic , it was still in the early stages of development -- it resembled a paper map with some icons scattered around. Now that things are much further al... [read more]
Dev Journal
No beta this week. Between my trip to San Francisco last week to meet with the media and Memorial Day, the AI isn’t far enough along to be included for a public beta. But if it makes you feel better, we’re playing it a lot internally. There’s been a ton of questions on the forums so let me go through them here: Q: What is the release date? A: August 24th is our official release date. Q: Is that release date subject to change? A: Yes. If we’re not happy wi... [read more]
News
IGN Gives Their Impressions of Elemental: War of Magic
IGN got their hands on a preview of Elemental: War of Magic, and have published their updated impressions of the upcoming game from Stardock. “In case you haven't been following along with coverage on this title, Elemental: War of Magic fuses turn-based strategy gameplay with role-playing elements in a high fantasy world. Once a game begins it's up to you to scour the terrain, acquire resources, build towns and try to secure a victory, which Stardock says will be possible in a nu... [read more]
Dev Journal
While Element comes packed with its own lore, players and modders can create their own fantasy universe using either the game options (while setting up a normal game) as well as making use of the Workshop for modding. The mod tools in Elemental are designed to let players design their own worlds in great detail. The 4 major pieces of the workshop are: The Tile Editor The Map Editor The Item Editor The Effects Editor The Tile Editor is used to create new til... [read more]