Cralon - new dungeon crawler by former Gothic creators

[JackFarmer]

Indie Game - Window/PS/X-Box

I am not native English, but for my German ears the English voices sound very German. The voice acting in the German trailer is much better though...and ends with a much better statement!

Anyways, looks promising and since @chakkmanintroduced me to the genre with "Arx Fatalis" (which I am currently playing), I think I will give this a shot. 

 

[chakkman]

17 minutes ago, JackFarmer said:

Anyways, looks promising and since @chakkmanintroduced me to the genre with "Arx Fatalis" (which I am currently playing), I think I will give this a shot. 

Wonderful game (Arx Fatalis), even though it has slight balancing issues, and punishes you when you're not playing as a character excercising magic, IMO. At some point, I had to quit my playthrough, because some enemies became too much for my sneaky ranged attack character.

Cralon looks interesting (I've watched it for some time now, although I have some concerns about the overall quality, because it's a 2 person project, with a lot of licensed assets, and some things the developers made themselves, but they're rather semi-pro at it (like the soundtrack). We will see.

Edited September 8, 2025 by chakkman

[JackFarmer]

6 minutes ago, chakkman said:

Wonderful game (Arx Fatalis), even though it has slight balancing issues, and punishes you when you're not playing as a character excercising magic, IMO. At some point, I had to quit my playthrough, because some enemies became too much for my sneaky ranged attack character.

 

Hm...I am ca. 4 hours in (after the first council meeting in the city), I upgraded lots of the sneaking stuff till now (stealtlh, bow, etc.). You think I should spend more skill points on magic to avoid problems?

[chakkman]

I definitely think some of the spells are pretty powerful, almost essential later in the game.

Whether or not you can also beat the game with a stealthy ranged character, I don't know. I only can say that I had issues later in the game, but, maybe I'm just too bad at playing it, or distributed my skill points unwisely.

I'd just go on and see how you do with your character. Frankly, casting the spells is a bit fiddly in the game anyway, so, maybe you will want to avoid that completely.

Some more food for thought: 

Sounds exactly like the problems I ran into, haha.

Edited September 8, 2025 by chakkman

[SeriousToni]

The whole game will take place in a dungeon AFAIK. I imagine this will be boring and tiresome after a short while but that's only my personal thought. 

[chakkman]

At least Arx Fatalis is pretty varied in terms of the game world.

BTW, I still love your signature.  

[lowenz]

Arx Insanity - A remaster and overhaul mod for Arx Fatalis - Home

[JackFarmer]

On 9/8/2025 at 8:35 PM, chakkman said:

I definitely think some of the spells are pretty powerful, almost essential later in the game.

Whether or not you can also beat the game with a stealthy ranged character, I don't know. I only can say that I had issues later in the game, but, maybe I'm just too bad at playing it, or distributed my skill points unwisely.

I'd just go on and see how you do with your character. Frankly, casting the spells is a bit fiddly in the game anyway, so, maybe you will want to avoid that completely.

Some more food for thought: 

Sounds exactly like the problems I ran into, haha.

Boy, oh boy, these stories really take the fun out of playing.

By four hours of playtime, I actually meant about four hours of game progress; in reality, it took me somewhere between 10 and 15 hours (had to look into walkthroughs as well as I had no clue what to do), but I hoped things would get easier with a higher character level.

If you obviously can't do it with stealth and a bow and arrow, then that's a major design flaw. It's a shame, I was really looking forward to it, but I don't think I'll continue playing now, because it sounds brutal, what's still to come in terms of difficult stuff. 

So I'm not surprised that the game didn't become that well known back then, if it's so unbalanced.

On 9/10/2025 at 11:25 AM, lowenz said:

Arx Insanity - A remaster and overhaul mod for Arx Fatalis - H

Unfortunately, I can't play the demo because I can't get it to run on Linux. Thus, this sounds completely crazy, hard to believe for me. If there really will be all these changes/additions/improvements, this would be the biggest sensation since the circus games of the ancient Romans.

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, JackFarmer said:

If you obviously can't do it with stealth and a bow and arrow, then that's a major design flaw.

Absolutely. In my opinion, Arkane Studios really just figured out balancing in Dishonored 1. Dark Messiah of Might & Magic also has its balancing flaws... play the game on anything but "Normal", and you know what I mean.  

Anyway, I didn't want to demotivate you. Just saying that there potentially could be difficulty issues later in the game. I think a melee character with some magical affinity would work well.

But, yeah, usually, I also tend to a stealthy ranged character. In Skyrim or Fallout, I play that way. In Gothic, ranged characters are completely useless too.

Edited September 12, 2025 by chakkman

[JackFarmer]

If anyone ever raises structural concerns about my designs again, they will be immediately thrown into the torture chambers of the First Builders:

Does not look bad to me, but has these..."UE Adventure Game Construction Kit" vibes, as already mentioned here by others.

Anyways cannot really play the demo as I only get stills on my workstation. Don't know whether this is because I am on Linux or that it's simply not playable on my hardware anymore.

Opinions on the quality of the demo seem to vary widely. Already touched it? @chakkman @SeriousToni

[I.C.H.I.]

4 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

Does not look bad to me, but has these..."UE Adventure Game Construction Kit" vibes, as already mentioned here by others.

The lighting is terrible... Not a single screenshot on Steam looks good and that is way too common in majority of games. AAA studios care about it, for example Elden Ring has very good lighting in dungeons, but smaller studios rarely have the expertise.

UPD I just finished the demo and I think I'll skip this game, it's pretty bad.

Edited April 4 by I.C.H.I.

[SeriousToni]

@JackFarmer

No I didn't try it out and while looking at the screenshots I guess I never will. Like others said, it's the typical UE fantasy game look and having everything taking place in a dungeon only doesn't give it any benefits too  

[chakkman]

TBH, I was very disappointed by the demo...

Best to try it out yourself, but, it seemed unfinished, uninspired, and, frankly, pretty amateurish. There's something very strange with the animations of the enemies as well, as if they would move in 10 frames per second. And, the item handling is none really. Can turn the items in the world around in your hands, and that was it.

If you want to play a game like this, better play Arx Fatalis. Or wait for Monomyth.

Edited April 13 by chakkman

[datiswous]

On 9/12/2025 at 9:03 AM, JackFarmer said:

Unfortunately, I can't play the demo because I can't get it to run on Linux.

Have you tried installing the Linux version of the engine Arx Libertalis. The new engine supports Linux.

https://wiki.arx-libertatis.org/Installing_the_game_data_under_Linux

Then I asume you just have to copy over the data from the demo except for the Arx Libertalis engine. Although I haven't tried it yet. But I do own the game, so could give it a try and report back.

[JackFarmer]

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

Have you tried installing the Linux version of the engine Arx Libertalis. The new engine supports Linux.

https://wiki.arx-libertatis.org/Installing_the_game_data_under_Linux

Then I asume you just have to copy over the data from the demo except for the Arx Libertalis engine. Although I haven't tried it yet. But I do own the game, so could give it a try and report back.

I will look into it and get back to you.

[chakkman]

Doesn't look too promising: https://www.metacritic.com/game/cralon/

With Gamestar, you have to substract th 10% ex-Piranha Bytes bonus.  So, rather a 55/100 kind of game. Also backed by the reviews on Steam.

Well the demo was bloody shite, as the English people say, so...

[datiswous]

When I hear the name Arx Fatalis I always think about fish..

(the only fish ai in tdm to be precise)

Edited April 18 by datiswous

[datiswous]

On 4/14/2026 at 4:39 PM, JackFarmer said:

I will look into it and get back to you.

I tried it myself and got it working.

What I ran into: The default Archiver/unzip tool has issues unzipping the rar archive. It results in an error somewhere during unzipping. I had the 7zip command line utility installed (maybe it is installed by default). You might also need the rar package for it.

I made a new folder, put the archive into it and renamed it to arx.rar

Then in a console window I did this command:

7z x arx.rar

This unzips the file without errors.

Then I copied all data in the Steam install folder. Then it works. If you have the cd version, you might have to follow the guide I linked. You at least also need to install the patch. This is already included in the Steam version.

Btw. there's also this HD-patch mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/arx-neuralis

Edit: I have to say, I like the textures from the HD-patch a lot more than the ones from Arx Insanity mod. At least from my early test.

 

Edited April 18 by datiswous

[JackFarmer]

15 hours ago, chakkman said:

Doesn't look too promising: https://www.metacritic.com/game/cralon/

With Gamestar, you have to substract th 10% ex-Piranha Bytes bonus.  So, rather a 55/100 kind of game. Also backed by the reviews on Steam.

Well the demo was bloody shite, as the English people say, so...

Yeah, I guess we can just throw that in the trash. But I suppose we couldn't really expect much more, since the demo—which wasn't even out that long—already had some serious flaws.

If those people used to be in charge at PB, then I’m not surprised by the company’s downfall now (I’ve never played Gothic, Risen, or Elex).

[chakkman]

The Gothics and Risen 1 and 2 were great, but, the games certainly saw a decline since Risen 3. Elex simply wasn't my cup of tea, and, there were actually things on the technical side which were rather worse in Elex than in Risen. IMO, you could already see how they cut corners in Elex.

[Filizitas]

Ok so. I am a german developer, just like the cralon devs.

This game is an insult to the entire german developer scene.
It feels like they are purposefully making the most shit mud game they could have.
Even in german this game reeks of amateur skill level.

From ex phb devs i expected far more you have no idea!

Dont get this game, you are being scammed. No patch in the world can save this game.
It is flawed on every level.

Run away.

[JackFarmer]

56 minutes ago, Filizitas said:

Ok so. I am a german developer, just like the cralon devs.

This game is an insult to the entire german developer scene.
It feels like they are purposefully making the most shit mud game they could have.
Even in german this game reeks of amateur skill level.

From ex phb devs i expected far more you have no idea!

Dont get this game, you are being scammed. No patch in the world can save this game.
It is flawed on every level.

Run away.

Check (or check not) the YT channel from a guy called "Kitsunaki". The video name is "Cralon Demo angespielt Ruhrpott Dungeon Crawler".

This guy is a former PB dev. He really tried to keep his comment professional. I wonder what he says now.

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, Filizitas said:

Ok so. I am a german developer, just like the cralon devs.

This game is an insult to the entire german developer scene.
It feels like they are purposefully making the most shit mud game they could have.
Even in german this game reeks of amateur skill level.

I can only guess here. Björn Pankratz (the guy who singlehandedly developed Cralon) used to be a game designer, creative director and project manage for Piranha Bytes former games. I didn't even know that he can program. On Cralon, he needed to do everything. He already created the soundtrack and sounds for Elex 1 and 2 (which aren't very good, by the way...) and he did the same for Cralon.

My guess here is that he's just not competent enough in all regards. As already has been mentioned, the assets seem to be licensed, and, the prgramming/scripting he did himself seems a bit layman-ish.

Even if you take his work as part of the Piranha Bytes team, it seems to have sufferend in recent years. There's some stuff in ELEX where I wonder what they've been smoking, in terms of setting (factions with advanced sci-fi weapons against barbarians with sword and bow, and the sci-fi faction hasn't wiped them out yet?), story and characters. The graphics were rather a step back compared to Risen 2 and 3. The game world was, untypical for Piranha Bytes, rather sterile, empty, and didn't really feel hand made like on their other games. The quest were a bit boring, and so on.

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to go one-man-army now.

Anyway. we still have Monomyth to look forward to.  

Edited April 19 by chakkman

[chakkman]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3892510/Asterfel/

By former CD Project Red and Piranha Bytes developers...

Not sure why I never heard of it until today.

[Filizitas]

Oh thats sick! Gonna try the playtest now!