Retro MMORPG Ashen Empires Launches On Steam Alongside Precursor Dransik

Iron Will Games’ Ultima-inspired MMORPG a slight hiccup last month related to the process of porting over the game to the platform. The retro MMORPG also launched alongside its precursor Dransik.

Ashen Empires launched into open beta in September 2022 and is essentially the same game as Dransik, a retro 2D fantasy MMORPG that first launched four years earlier in 1998, but with a newer graphics engine. Both games were developed by Iron Will Games back when it was still known as Asylumsoft and was later sold to TKO Software in 2003 who then sold them back to Iron Will in 2004.

As you can imagine, both games feature extremely outdated visuals by today’s standards, but 8-bit and 16-bit MMORPGs still have a cult following these days with new ones still being released to this day. Ashen Empires’ Steam version currently has “Positive” reviews on the platform, which means that around 77% of players like the game. Surprisingly, it also has an average peak daily concurrency of around 300 players which is better than some newer games out there.