Even in an historic year for RPGs, I’m still damn thirsty for more updates to Dread Delusion, an indie RPG set on the cursed asteroids orbiting a small red star. As part of the Realms Deep 2023 showcase, DreadXP revealed a first look at the game’s Clockwork Kingdom coming later this fall.
Dread Delusion’s the perfect game for anyone craving that Morrowind sort of weirdness or Planescape: Torment’s wry, almost flippant take on the most thought-provoking philosophical quandaries. It’s far more than a grasping imitation of the greats though—I’ve fallen in love with Dread Delusion’s dense, focused approach to open world design, with your stat investments affecting exploration and discovery just as much as they do combat.
Dread Delusion being an open-ended RPG, you could actually always break into the Clockwork Kingdom’s isolated island with some speed boosting magic and a bit of gumption, there just wasn’t anything to do there. The kingdom and its thematically appropriate Clockwork God did feature heavily in the very early version of Dread Delusion on the 2020 Haunted PS1 Demo Disc, but the game’s story and setting have shifted radically since then.
The Clockwork Kingdom looks to feature another major settlement for players to explore, as well as some expected steampunky enemies and rather more unexpected four-armed flesh abominations. Dread Delusion’s previous hub areas did an excellent job of offering Fallout-style morally ambiguous, setting-altering choices, and I’m eager to see what kind of ethical gut punches the Clockwork Kingdom has in store.
The Clockwork Kingdom update has a general launch window for this fall, and until then, you can check out the rest of the RPG’s early access areas on Steam. Even further down the line, developer Lovely Hellplace has teased that Dread Delusion will take us to the ruined surface of the world that the asteroid inhabitants fled in the distant past.