Chronicles of Elyria shifts development roadmap of its six different pieces based on feedback

By Jason Junior On Apr 7, 2024

Back in January, Chronicles of Elyria began an alpha test of a feedback form, then started to process some of that form’s responses a month later. The breaking down of feedback continues, as Soulbound Studios’ Jeromy Walsh has posted a rundown of what’s been said and what happens next in his Discord.

Walsh once again expresses surprise that people want an MMO and not whatever ElyriaChat and ElyriaMUD were supposed to be, despite his insistence that getting testers into these splinters would represent “nearly 50% of COE’s mechanics.” As a result, focus on ElyriaMUD will end, while ElyriaChat is planned to be part of a website update later down the line.

What has been apparently gleaned from the alpha feedback form test is a shuffling of development priority for the now six different games that are associated with the originally crowdfunded MMORPG: The strategy title Kingdoms of Elyria Domains will release first, followed by the colony sim KOE Settlements, then followed by KOE Online and KOE Legacy as Walsh had planned all the way back in 2021.

This now brings us to another piece of the wider COE puzzle in the form of Prologue The Awakening, which has since ballooned into its own standalone game called Elyria Adventures and is now returning to the overall roadmap. Walsh describes this other side piece as a sort of digital TTRPG toolkit that would let players create and download their own adventure modules within the Elyria universe, including Prologue. Walsh additionally claims this has been a plan that has been gestating since 2018 and that respondents to the feedback form expressed interest in Adventures.

The whole thing closes by stating that these new roadmap plans don’t change Soulbound’s intentions to regrow itself (recall that Walsh laid off the entire studio in 2020 and then started to walk back word of development ending) and reiterating that original Kickstarter backers at the $35 Elyrian tier or higher won’t have to pay more money for these releases. Assuming, of course, any of them happens; there’s no timeline for any of this.

source: Reddit, thanks to Felix for the tip!

Chronicles of Elyria stunned MMO gamers in 2020 by announcing it was out of money, had laid off the devs, had closed Soulbound Studio, and had ended development on the game. Though CEO Jeromy Walsh later retracted much of that and said the game was still in production with volunteer staff, the gamers who’d backed it for $14M+ in crowdfunds pressed on with a lawsuit that was dismissed in 2022. Since 2021, the revivified but ensmallened team has focused on spinoff game Kingdoms of Elyria.