Eldrem Kingdoms: Assassin’s Creed veterans make creature bonds the engine of their indie RPG

When George Cercheaza and his co-founders walked out of AAA development and into a 13-person studio in Bucharest, they brought with them a design conviction their former employers had no room for: that in a creature RPG, the creature should not be a companion. It should be the source of every power the player holds.

That conviction is the engine of Eldrem Kingdoms, which Eldrem Studios officially unveiled today. The game places players in a shattered fantasy world of floating islands and ancient ruins, where every spell, combat skill, and special ability they carry belongs — entirely — to the creature currently active at their side. Switch companions mid-fight and the whole power set changes with them. There is no such thing as a personal magic system in Eldrem Kingdoms; every piece of power is borrowed, and borrowed from something alive. The mechanic turns every taming decision into a strategic argument: which creature makes you the fighter this encounter demands?

From that central pivot, the studio has designed a full creature lifecycle that sits underneath everything. Rare species scatter across the world and can be tamed, hatched, evolved, and selectively bred to pass specific traits and combat roles across generations. The fortress-building layer adds another dimension: players construct and defend a floating stronghold, develop dedicated breeding and training facilities, and recruit NPC specialists who automate the parts of daily upkeep that would otherwise crowd the adventure. The scope is considerable for a 13-person team — but reads as plausible because the central mechanic is disciplined enough to organise every other system around its logic.

Dragon riding gameplay in Eldrem Kingdoms showing creature-powered exploration — Image: Eldrem Studios

The Kickstarter campaign Eldrem Studios launched to fund additional features hit its goal within five hours of going live on September 25. Kickstarter has since marked it a “Project We Love” — its curatorial designation for standout campaigns. “We’ve all developed games for many years as part of big AAA studios,” co-founder George Cercheaza said in the announcement. “It’s great to be able to start something new on our own, make brave decisions, and work directly with the community on how we evolve the game.”

Eldrem Kingdoms is built as a premium, complete single-player experience with no pay-to-win mechanics, targeting PC via Steam Early Access in 2027. Co-op and competitive multiplayer are listed as future updates. The game is live for wishlisting on Steam, and the Kickstarter campaign continues to run — the team adds new stretch goals in response to community feedback.

Tags: indie games, creature RPGs, Eldrem Kingdoms, Eldrem Studios, George Cercheaza, Kickstarter