Ardenfall
is a Wide-Open Sandbox Western RPG game developed by Spellcast Studios. The player finds themselves traveling to the Isles of Ardenfall looking for the settlement of Garkai, but there isn't really an overarching narrative to speak of. Instead, one of the key features is that the plot happens mainly through Emergent Narrative where the player's decisions affects the world around them with hundreds of NPCs and many of them having unique dialogue and quests.
Stated to be in development since 2017, a demo was released on May 29, 2022. This demo was updated on September 30, 2025, sunsetting the old 2022 version (which can still be downloaded from the official site), and the game is slated to enter Early Access some time in early 2026.
The game provides examples of:
- Character Customization: After the beginning narration, the game prompts you to customize your character. You can decide your character's appearance, sex, race, interest and background traits, and attributes. In the 2022 demo, you could also decide your faction and starting items.
- Excuse Plot: Nothing is known about why the player character is going to Garkai in the first place. The closest thing that's even remotely like a plot is the player character suddenly falling into a cave at the very beginning of the game and having to find a way out (in the 2022 demo) or being washed ashore after your ship gets destroyed by mysterious green tendrils (in the 2025 demo), but that's it.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: One draw of the game featured on the game's press kit is the ability for the player to kill everyone around them and even resurrect them for their desires.
