Elin is an upcoming open-world isometric RPG from Noa (Lafrontier), the creator of the original game Elona.

Elona has been a phenomenon in Japanese indie circles and western weeb communities for over a decade due to its uniqueness and open-ended gameplay. The game has been kept alive with fan-created mods, maps, and other tools.

In Elin players will be free to explore the game world and do what they please between adventuring, town management, exploration, and more. In this way, the spirit of Elona shows through in this narrative prequel.

Elin began as a Kickstarter project by the original developer of Elona and reached 63 million yen (approx. 434,000 USD) out of a 5 million (approx. 34,000 USD) goal, that’s over 12 times as much. Elin is coming to PC via Steam on November 1, 2024.

Here’s a rundown on the game, plus a previous trailer:

This is a prequel to the free game “Elona,” which was released 10 years ago and spawned numerous stories and adventurers who never returned.

While retaining the traditional roguelike gameplay, the new game adds crafting and survival elements, base building and management, and enhanced graphics in a quarter-view format.

Features:

• Sandbox RPG with survival, crafting, home and town building and management.
• Randomly generated dungeons and content, as well as well-developed fixed maps that are faithful to the world setting.
• Classic turn-based roguelike gameplay.
• An epic tale of humans and Eleas.

For some more context about the original Elona and its popularity in niche internet communities, you can check out a review from SsethTzeentach below.