Releases March 17, 2026
Journals
Dev Journal
The world of Elemental Beta 1Z
For Beta 1Z we are going to do something different. We are hard-coding it to a particular map so that we can better debug any problems players encounter with it. This is the cloth map of beta 1Z. It’s designed with 4 players in mind and is very tiny. But it should let players “play” through the basic game mechanics of Elemental. I whipped this up in the map editor. This Summer, players will be able to take a crack at making their own worlds. I hate to say this but I fou... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: How game mechanics evolve (long)
Internally we are constantly playing, testing, and trying out new ideas. Here are some examples of discussions we have had: To: Team From: Brad Date: Feb 2010 Re: Tile density One of the things I’m a bit concerned about is how barren the world is. We want to make sure that Elemental’s world is filled with interesting things t... [read more]
News
IGN has an Elemental: War of Magic Preview Up
IGN.com got a chance to chat with the Stardock team while in San Francisco while at GDC 2010, and they have published a preview of Elemental: War of Magic. “I'll dispense with the usual opener here. I won't talk about Stardock's stellar reputation as a game developer, or its principled stance as a publisher. I won't bore you with lengthy remembrances of Master of Magic or tired complaints about the scarcity of turn-based fantasy strategy games. Instead, I'll just talk about Brad Wardel... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental Player Input: Unit names and quotes
When players design a unit that are asked to give it a name and a quote. However, we don’t want players to feel like they have to do this. To that end, we want to create a system where the game will “recommend” a randomly picked name and a randomly picked quote. We thought it might be fun to let the beta testers get their suggestions on this into the game. To that end, what kinds of fun and interesting quotes would you like be randomly selected as the defa... [read more]
Dev Journal
It’s time to name the currency in Elemental. The Random House team has come up with rigma which we like a lot. An alternative would be gildars. But if someone has a really cool name we’ll consider it. [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental Player Input: Champions!
My wife was a great cleric. Adina was a powerful wizard. Vic was a noble knight and me, well, I was a scoundrel – I refused to be called a thief. Antarac had no proof behind the theft of the Inzul jewels. This time, however, we had gotten in over our heads. We had entered the ruins of Uthrong beneath the spine of the world and had come face to face with a Lich. Given the effort it had taken Adina to counter the magical seal that had protected the opening to Uthrong, we... [read more]
Dev Journal
GDC 2010 -- Impulse::Reactor is revolutionary
At GDC 2009, Stardock released GOO (Game Object Obfuscation) for developers to begin providing some intellectual property protection for their games that did so without annoying legitimate customers. The idea behind GOO was to put together a system that followed the Gamers Bill of Rights but still was acceptable to publishers looking to keep their games from being casually pirated. Since then, it has been adopted by several developers and publishers including Paradox and THQ. At GDC 2010, ... [read more]