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Hello, members of the resistance!
The day has arrived: Prelude Dark Pain is now available in Early Access! We're excited as you will finally discover the world of Statera and you may have several questions regarding the game and its Early Access, which is why you can find our FAQ at the end of this news! Don't hesitate to read it as it may answers the main questions you have on Prelude Dark Pain! We're also having a 10% sale to celebrate this release!
Prelude Dark Pain is a tactical RPG set in a dark fantasy world. The combat system is grid and party-based, inspired by classics like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Vandal Hearts.
The art style is also inspired by many other works, including games such as the Darkest Dungeon series, but also by the comic book scene, especially Mike Mignola’s work on Hellboy. The buildings and environment designs are also deeply rooted in the Andalusian style as a tribute to our studio’s origins!
The game has been designed with controllers in mind first, which is why we strongly recommend using a controller for the intended experience.
However, the Keyboard and mouse controls are implemented for Early Access and are inspired by the controls of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles.
For this Early Access launch, you'll have access to approximately between 12 to 15 hours of gameplay which encompasses:
Full Act 1 available;
9 playable heroes: Soren, Tizon, Tammais, Maya, Sade, Gala, Rufio, Urza and Rayder;
4 active skills and 2 passive and virtues for each hero (~63 skills);
World Map unlocked and explorable;
Cutscenes;
Forge accessible to craft and upgrade gear;
If you wish for some tips to start your adventure, you can read our 5 tips to Start guide here:
Early Access will last for approximately 1 year. Prelude Dark Pain is the first project of our studio, most of our team members have previous experience in the gaming industry and also, as gamers ourselves, we know how important your community input is. Community feedback can help you see things that you can’t point out when you are working on a project this closely and with a developer perspective. We’ll keep working on the game and its development, but we’d also like to hear about your feedback and thoughts along the way.
With this Early Access, we can work on the next content while improving the one already available thanks to your contributions. We’re aiming to make it a “living” momentum with many updates, dev blogs and interactions between you, our community, and us, the devs working on the game! We're especially excited to release the major updates that will let you continue the story and enjoy new battles!
As we mentioned in the previous section, we wish for this Early Access to be as lively as possible, and involving our community is our goal. With suggestions, bug report and feedback, you can help us improve the part of the game already available, while shaping the ones about to be released.
You can share your bug report/feedback in our dedicated threads on our Discord and/or Steam forums!
The game will cost 19.99 USD/ 19.50 euros/ 16.75£. We have set regional prices, so the exact price may depend on your country.
This price may vary in the future depending on the content added. As we move further in Early Access with the major updates bringing more content (battles, cutscenes, heroes, skills etc…), the price may increase a bit.
The game will be available in 10 languages:
English
Spanish
French
German
Brazilian - Portuguese
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
We have a Roadmap ready to let you know when the different updates are expected to be available and what they will contain. All milestones are open to change, as in any Early Access, but we’ll let you know what to expect beforehand and update you as development goes on!
Check out our Roadmap here:
Initially, we considered the world of Prelude Dark Pain and how it would immerse players in this new universe. That's why we used the opera's divisions to symbolize this dive into the unknown: ‘Prelude’ or 'Overture’ in operas open the story and reveal the world's lore and settings, where the main elements of the opera piece will unfold. Prelude Dark Pain is a full story, we choose the word Prelude to emphasize the idea that this was only the beginning of the Dark Pain within the story.
In Prelude Dark Pain, you will follow the story of Soren, a retired warrior now working as a blacksmith for a faction called the Blue Nets. Living away from battle with his wife Hegoa and their two children, Tizon and Adara, Soren will eventually have to face his past again as his family is threatened by the order of the Ashen Crusade and their ruthless leader, General Forrel.
Thank you all for your support and we wish you tons of fun and adventure with Prelude Dark Pain!
Hey, members of the resistance!
It’s official: Prelude Dark Pain Early Access launches on July 27th!
For the Early Access release, all of Act 1 will be available, including 9 heroes, 63 skills unlockable for your team and access to the World Map!
We will display more information about the Early Access, its content and lenght, on the release day with our upcoming FAQ! That's why if you have any questions, share them in the comments or in our Discord so we can answer them!
We’re also participating in the TactiCon event, a digital celebration of strategy games on Steam! Don’t hesitate to check out the featured games which have demos and sales. Don't hesitate to wishlist the tactical games that caught your eye!
Steam Next Fest was super fun for us, and we were delighted to read your reviews and feedback on the demo! Here are some interesting numbers we previously shared:
On the development side, we have 2 main focus: delivering the most bug-free and best experience for Early Access: all content is there, we’re testing mostly to get rid of bugs and check our recent improvements made thanks to the SNF feedback (for example the clarity of the Initiative Queue, better tooltips, better UI and control…).
The Initiative Queue was reworked to improve readability.Better display of information with enemies attack range.
Our second main objective is to make progress on Act 2, which we’ve already started a few months ago. Regarding Act 2, we’ve also started on iterating on the new heroes that will join your team... but we keep this secret for now!
Thank you for all your support! We’ve already made several changes to elements that were pointed out in our feedback, we are currently hosting our last playtest before Early Access to gather even more information and make this launch the best possible!
Stay tuned for what’s next and see you on July 27th!
Hello again, Members of the Resistance!
A week after releasing our first public demo, we’re very happy with the feedback we’ve received. Our demo has now 91% positive reviews on Steam!
If you’ve played the demo and enjoyed it, don’t forget to leave a positive review. It really helps us get discovered by more people in the store.
Despite the positive reception, we are always listening to your constructive feedback to improve Prelude Dark Pain. Here are some changes we think you’ll like!
Three new camera modes:
Automatic (the camera follows the player's actions).
Semi-Automatic (the camera only follows certain player actions).
Manual (the camera is completely free; zoom in/out is disabled, and the player can control it as desired, except when an enemy attacks or moves).
Screen Shake: Added an option to disable camera shake to reduce motion sickness.
Hit Chance: In the confrontation menu, the hit percentage is now displayed to clearly show the chance of landing an attack.
Stat Explained: All stats are now explained in the confrontation menu.
Reduced the chance of evasion and missed attacks.
Balanced tutorial enemies.
The checkpoint for the third battle has been disabled to prevent bugs (it will be in the Early Access!).
Fixed several minor visual bugs.
Fixed several minor audio bugs.
Fixed several minor controller / keyboard and mouse bugs.
Fixed a bug with the initiative queue when viewing each character.
Thank you so much for all the love and support you’re giving Prelude Dark Pain. We're almost at 70,000 wishlists on Steam!
Good day, Members of the Resistance!
We are glad to announce that our demo is now available today and will stay active throughout the entire Steam Next Fest!
All our playtesters and Backers that participated in the playtest helped us shape and improve this demo. We’ve made improvements on certain features like game control and menus (look at this new UI!), so trying it out can bring you surprises in certain areas even if you already participated in the playtest!
What can I find in this demo? This demo is approximately one-hour long and will cover the start of Act 1 through:
A hands-on look at the tactical combat system.
The opening chapter of the story with four playable heroes: Soren, Tammais, Tizón, and Maya.
A stand-alone battle with a squad of 5 heroes, introducing a new playable character: Sade, a Keeper of the Veil that is fighting with a cross!
The battles of this demo will showcase two features of Prelude Dark Pain: moving battles and height difference.
Moving battles: experience a battle with three waves as the scenery keeps changing under your feet.
Heights: as you move upwards, you’ll get bonuses against your enemies.
This demo will be available in the following languages:
English
Spanish
Japanese
German
Russian
Portuguese
Korean
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Regarding recent videogame events, we’re proud that Prelude Dark Pain has been featured in several of them like the Game Effect Showcase, the Clemmy Best Indie Summer Showcase and the N3 that will happen this Sunday, on June 7th and which highlights the Spanish gaming industry!
The Early Access content is currently what we are shaping as we're getting closer and closer to the summer release, plenty of tough battles and new enemies to face, as well as new characters to bring in your squad, with unique skills to master in combat!
You can leave a review on the demo page, it helps a lot indie studios for visibility so if you had fun with Prelude Dark Pain's demo, let us know with your review!
Until then, we'll see you for the Steam Next Fest in a few days, enjoy the demo, share your feedback in the Steam Discussions or in our Discord.
Good day, Members of the Resistance!
Our first ever playtest with Backers and non-Backers on Steam has ended at the beginning of this week. First of all, a huge thank you to all our playtesters, your feedback, suggestions and bug report helped us a lot in visualising the improvements area of Prelude Dark Pain.
For anyone who requested access to the playtest but were not selected this time, we wanted to thank you as well for your interest and support in the game. We're keeping your registration in case we host once again a playtest in the future, so stay tuned as we may ask for your input at a later date!
Here are some interesting numbers regarding this playtest:
1303 players registered activated their key for this playtest;
The average score given by playtesters was 4/5;
92% of playtesters shared they wanted to play again/participate in the next playtest as well;
The three major feedback we've received and that we are actively working on improving were:
Better support of keyboard & mouse control;
Faster pacing on the world map;
UI/UX Improvements (mainly forging);
We can also already share with you some new additions/changes we've already made:
The environment height differences between all the characters are now displayed when using the attack/skill ability button;
Attacks that reduce the enemy's health to less than 5% will finish them off, and they will die (because it's cool 😎);
All heroes now gain the same number of passive tier for character progression (something that was spotted during playtests, well done!);
We've added gray items to the heroes' starting kit to encourage more farming and blacksmithing, and to improve the early-game item economy for a greater sense of progression;
New modes of resolution - Ultrawide is working now! 🤩
We’ve changed pop-up animation in the dialogues;
Restart battle option is real! If you want to have all battle bonuses, now you can!
Checkpoints into the harder battles;
Skip dialogue animations (testing)!
⬆️ Height differences is shown with the little icon at the top of characters when they interact in combat!
...As well as plenty of other additions and improvements that we will keep secret for now! That's it for today's news, we'll keep you updated on development, and if you're looking for a nice article to read, you can check what PCGames said about the playtests of the game! And if you prefer to watch rather than read, check Mortismal Gaming great video!
Thank you again for your support and for the 50K wishlists, it really helps the game's visibility and warms the heart of our team to see so many of you interested in Prelude Dark Pain!
Now, let's get back to work!
Hello everyone!
So… We’re a bit late with this new development post, but we swear it’s because we were working on tons of things at the studio! Let’s get a look about how 2026 started for us!
We were at The Mix + Kinda Funny Game Showcase at Games Developer Conference, both in the online showcase with our exclusive gameplay presentation trailer that introduces one of the fights we’re very proud of, involving a moving train and playing with your environment!
It was also a pleasure to meet you at the on-site event and watch you play the first part of the game!
The Turn-Based Thursday Fest on Steam's main page was also a great moment as we were super honored to be among so many great games of the turn-based genre!
In addition to events, we were working on our first milestones for the game, which will shape the beginning of Prelude Dark Pain through Act 1. Our top priority is to ensure no major bugs occur and that all cinematics and fights are implemented, making Act 1 playable as soon as possible in its cleanest version.
Many changes were made to the first version of Act 1 that we worked on:
We reworked the World Map to make it livelier and interactive through encounters and side quests;
Clarity of battle interface was also improved, both through tooltips on character status, buffs, and stats, but also on the environmental comprehension with clearer indications of where enemies are facing to strategize your own placement against foes!
All major cinematics and battles are implemented, as well as the beginning of the skill tree for most characters;
We’re proud of these milestones that are helping us get closer and closer to delivering the best possible version for Early Access (coming this Summer if you have not marked your calendars yet!). Thank you again for your support, whether you follow us in this journey from the beginning or just discovered us today (hi!), we can’t wait for you to try the game!
“When can we play the game?”, we understand the question and, believe us, that is also our biggest wish. As Act 1 takes a more definitive shape and Act 2 is also on its way, we are now confident that we can host a playtest in April.
This would be our first playtest to gather feedback on the first part of the game. There will be a limited number of places with guaranteed access for our Backers. If you request access via Steam, you will join our queue of potential playtesters for future playtests or to fill some available slots.
IMPORTANT: All footage from the game should not be shared outside of the playtest, if you are among the chosen playtesters, we will ask you not to share any type of content of this playtest or we will have to remove your access to playtests and further event. Thank you for your understanding.
If you have not done it already, you can join our Discord to talk with us and have exclusive announcements before everyone else! Cheers!
Hello everyone!
A new post about the development of Prelude Dark Pain is coming at the end of this month, just as we promised. We have a lot of news to share with you, but one of them is really important: we have a new publisher!
Firesquid Games is joining our family to help make Prelude Dark Pain an even better game. The publishers behind amazing games like Reus 2 and City Tales are not only supporting our project with additional financial muscle, but also QA, their entire design and marketing teams, and more to improve Prelude Dark Pain even further.
And there's something very important: all creative decisions are in the hands of the Prelude Dark Pain development team. That’s why Firesquid Games is the perfect partner for this new journey!
Simon Bachelier, Director of Operations at Firesquid Games, would like to share a few words with the project’s backers: "The whole Firesquid team is excited to include Prelude Dark Pain in our 2026 lineup and partner with Quickfire Studios to make a new turn-based tactics gem reference for the year to come! The dark fantasy storytelling and aesthetics blended with a well-crafted and deep tactical design capture exactly what we look for in our upcoming releases!"
We’re now part of an incredible family, check them out!
But the good news doesn’t stop here: we’ve been nominated for Best Art Direction at the Pucela Game Awards! We’ll find out the winners on December 2nd. Fingers crossed!
Time to talk about how development is progressing. Let’s start with the cinematics—we know you like them a lot. Currently, all the cinematics from Act 1 already either have flat colors or are even closer to being completed. We’re ahead of schedule, so we’re very happy with our progress.
On the other hand, we’ve already created all sidequests for Act 1 of Prelude Dark Pain, and we’re now working on the random battles. We’ve also begun production on Act 2, with the first heroes and enemies that will be available, besides battle scenarios.
We’re really happy to meet the deadlines in every area, and we want to thank you for all your support. There are already almost 50,000 wishlists on Steam! Keep supporting us!
We’ll publish the next update at the end of December to wish you all Happy Holidays.
A big hug to everyone!
Hello everyone!
We're back with a new update on the development of Prelude Dark Pain. This post should have been published a week ago, but we're publishing it now for a very good reason —as you'll see in a few minutes.
First of all, we want to say "thank you"— almost 1,000 backers have tried the Prelude Dark Pain demo. It’s been an incredible experience, we’ve gathered a lot of feedback, and we’re implementing it into the game. THANK YOU, from the bottom of our hearts, for everything—your support and this community are absolutely essential to us.
We're sorry we weren’t able to gift that extra key for a friend, but Steam only provided one key per backer. We hadn’t informed you earlier because we were trying to get a second key up until the last moment, but unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. The demo codes have now expired and the demo will be deleted in a few weeks (October 31st), as we mentioned in the July update. If your code has expired, you forgot to redeem it, or it ended up in your spam folder, we have good news for you: there will be a new public demo during the next Steam Next Fest in February 2026, available for all players!
Remember to wishlist Prelude Dark Pain on Steam—we’re on our way to 50,000 players!
Development of Prelude Dark Pain is going very well and we’re thrilled to announce that we've been hitting the internal milestones set for the team. Almost all of the main story content for Act 1, which will be available in Early Access, is already finished. We’re currently polishing battles & environments, and making sure everything works smoothly. Likewise, Prelude Dark Pain's systems have now been fully merged... and Act 1 is playable from beginning to end!
Do you want more good news? All the Act 1 cinematics have already been drawn and are currently being colored, and the sound design for them has begun. We’re actually ahead of our schedule, which is a big relief for the art team.
We also have almost all of the music composed for the Act 1 main battles and other scenarios, and we can assure you—it’s absolutely stunning. Isaac Montes and Kumi Tanioka are creating something truly special.
Remember at the beginning we mentioned this post was a little delayed? Here's why: the first dev diary for Prelude Dark Pain is finally here! This first video covers the playtesting process we held behind closed doors at The Game Kitchen’s headquarter. Huge thanks to the creators of Blasphemous and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound for all the generous support they’ve given us.
We’ll be posting the next Prelude Dark Pain update at the end of November 2025, with more details on the development. In the meantime, once again, thank you all for your continued support—and for the love you’ve shown us.
Our friends at Epictellers Entertainment just launched their Kickstarter campaign for Starfinder: Afterlight, a sci-fantasy RPG coming to PC in Early Access in 2026. Please check it out! It’s a story-rich, turn-based RPG set in the Starfinder universe, with an amazing cast of characters. Think Guardians of the Galaxy meets Divinity. Just watch the Kickstarter Trailer!
Starfinder: Afterlight has also revealed a fantastic cast bringing life to a group of misfit companions that you will meet during your adventure, including Neil Newbon (Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil Village) as voice director, Kole (class: Soldier, voiced by Fred Tatasciore), Tycho (class: Operative, voiced by Inel Tomlinson), Lu-323 (class: Envoy, voiced by Melissa Medína), and Sterling (Class: Solarian, voiced by James Alexander).
Check it out, support the Kickstarter campaign if you'd like, and wishlist on Steam!
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Prelude Dark Pain, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Prelude Dark Pain statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.