Developer Lovely Hellplace’s debut project, Dread Delusion, is one of my favorite indie games from the past few years. This open-world action RPG may have been first released in 2024, but it’s a spiritual successor to older fantasy adventures, borrowing most heavily from the alien world and narrative freedom of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.
If in-depth combat is what you’re looking for, this might not be the game for you. But if you want to explore questlines with multiple solutions (and no right answer), Dread Delusion might scratch that itch. And in classic RPG fashion, certain quest outcomes may only be achievable if your character specializes in brute force, peaceable compromise or sneaky subterfuge. It’s entertaining to play out each character archetype to its full potential, which makes Dread Delusion extremely replayable.
Where Dread Delusion really shines is its worldbuilding — this is a game where you’ll seek out every non-playable character to exhaust their dialogue options, read every book and explore every secret just to discover more about the Oneiric Isles. We’re living in a dark fantasy gaming renaissance, and Dread Delusion’s depiction of a crusader church forcing an inquisition on a native peoples’ floating island homeland is a wonderful synthesis of grim fiction and real-world history.
There’s no handholding in this game, so it’s up to you where to go first, what you’ll discover and who you’ll ally with in the conflict brewing between the crusaders and the old god worshippers. Dread Delusion is just as good as some of Bethesda or Obsidian’s best work, which is high praise from an open-world RPG fan. And with PlayStation-inspired graphics, this is a perfect fit for the hybrid Switch 2 console.
Release Date: May 14, 2024
Genre: Open-world Morrowind-inspired RPG
Developer: Lovely Hellplace
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
