This article is incomplete
Some sections are missing or need additional details. Help improve it by contributing.
Wardens of Avalon is developed by Runes Studio and published by The Arcade Crew and Dotemu. It is presented as a dark Arthurian action RPG that blends adventuring and combat with the building and management of a player's own fiefdom.
Runes Studio is a French studio based in Normandy whose earlier work includes the 2022 game Goblin Gladiators. The Arcade Crew is the indie publishing label founded by Dotemu, a company known for reviving and creating retro and indie-style games. Wardens of Avalon was first revealed in June 2026.
The Studio
Runes Studio describes itself as a team set on making high quality games with unique hooks, and it states that its expertise is in top-down games with stylish or realistic visuals. That focus lines up with the perspective Wardens of Avalon is played from. The studio describes itself only as a team of professionals passionate about video games, and does not publish a headcount or a role breakdown.
The studio also publishes the working practices it holds itself to. It says it makes a point of avoiding presenteeism, crunch, and overwork, adapts working conditions to what each person needs, does not put a junior to work without proper mentoring, and anticipates pay raises so that people are paid what they are worth. Runes Studio frames the well-being of the team as the thing a game's quality depends on first.
The same page also lists the games its members worked on before joining. Each credit names the title, the studio behind it, and the part the team played on it. These are presented as the team's previous work rather than the studio's own catalogue, which so far holds one released game.
Previous Title | Studio | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem | Wolcen Studio | Led the character and environment teams, and worked on the animations |
Styx: Master of Shadows | Cyanide Studio | Gameplay direction and art direction |
Styx: Shards of Darkness | Cyanide Studio | Gameplay direction and art direction |
Malkyrs | Malkyrs Studio | Developed the connected card game and managed its art direction |
Aarklash: Legacy | Cyanide Studio | Environments, textures and lighting, credited to one team member |
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint | Ubisoft | UI and UX |
Blood Bowl II | Cyanide Studio | Art direction |
Every page of the studio's site also closes with a support credit for the Normandy region and the CNC, France's national centre for cinema and the moving image.
On the publishing side, The Arcade Crew is Dotemu's indie publishing division and works out of Paris, while Runes Studio is based in Normandy. The publisher lists Wardens of Avalon among the projects it currently has in hand, alongside Chivalware, Acornia: Mirror Worlds, and other titles it has not announced. Its own press material for the game restates the 2027 window, gives Steam as the platform, and records the price as still to be set.
Publishing and Ownership
The Arcade Crew sits inside a much larger group. Dotemu is one of two publishing divisions of PULLUP Entertainment, which also owns Focus Entertainment Publishing and a set of development studios including Dovetail Games, Deck13 and BlackMill Games. The group reported revenue of 281 million euros and more than 600 staff across Europe for its 2025/26 financial year, so Wardens of Avalon sits in a listed company's release plan as well as on an indie label's slate.
The group's financial statements name the game directly. Its first-quarter statement for 2026/27, published on July 16, 2026, lists the game in the Dotemu line-up for that financial year alongside Chivalware, Theos: City of Myth and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster, and the same grouping had already appeared in the full-year statement a month earlier. The group's financial year runs to the end of March, which makes that placement tighter than the 2027 window the store page and the studio both give. Nothing in the game's own channels has narrowed the date, so 2027 remains the announced window and the group's line-up is best read as a planning horizon rather than a release announcement.
Release
The game is planned for release in 2027. It is confirmed for PC, and supports both single-player and online co-op for up to four players. A specific price has not been announced. Ahead of launch, the developers ran a free Steam playtest from June 23 to July 6, 2026. Sign-ups opened alongside the reveal on June 7, and on June 19, four days before the doors opened, the team said 20,000 players had registered. Once the playtest was live, the team shipped hotfix updates in response to player feedback, smoothing the opening hours of the game. It closed on schedule, and the developers followed it with a feedback survey and a round-up answering the questions players had asked most often.
The playtest ran in English only. In a round-up published after it closed, the developers named French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish as planned for launch. The store listing now publishes support for nine languages: English, which is the only one with full audio, alongside French, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Ukrainian.
The store listing carries regional age indications rather than a formal board certificate: 14 in Brazil, 16 in Germany and 18 in Indonesia, each flagged for violence, with the Indonesian entry also citing online interaction. Those are generated from the developer's own content declaration, and no North American or European board rating has been published for the game. The listing separately notes that the game includes interactive elements in the form of online interactivity.
System Requirements
The Steam store page lists the PC system requirements for the Windows build. The minimum target is Windows 10 with an Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, 12 GB of memory, and a GeForce GTX 1080, Radeon RX 550, or Intel Arc A310 LP. The recommended target moves up to Windows 11, an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600X, 16 GB of memory, and a GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Radeon RX 6650 XT, or Intel Arc B580. Full details are on the system requirements page. These pre-launch figures may change before release.
Design
The developers describe a game built around player freedom: a classless combat system that lets players reshape their build at will, a world of handcrafted regions to explore, and a home fiefdom that grows and must be defended. The aim is an adventure that works equally well for a lone knight or a coordinated group restoring order to Avalon.
Reveal
Wardens of Avalon was revealed during the PC Gaming Show 2026 on June 7, 2026, with a world-premiere trailer. It is framed as a dark Arthurian action RPG played from a top-down, isometric perspective, blending action combat with survival-style crafting and base-building.
The developers have noted that the reveal trailer's footage was captured on a pre-alpha build, and that they are already improving the game's visuals, changes that players could already see during the playtest.
Gameplay Trailer and Second Playtest
On September 2, 2026, the developers released a new gameplay trailer, going beyond the original announcement footage to show exploration, combat, and fiefdom rebuilding together. Alongside it, they announced that the Steam playtest will reopen in October 2026.
Unlike the first playtest, the reopened one is not adding new content to the adventure. The developers describe it as carrying over the tweaks, fixes, and quality-of-life improvements built from feedback on the June playtest, and they are asking returning and new players alike for another round of impressions on how the game plays now. An exact date within October had not been set as of the announcement.
The announcement also reconfirmed the languages planned for both the reopened playtest and the full release: French, English, German, Spanish (EU), Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese.