The "Skyrim Clone" stuck in Early Access hell.

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]You know, for an Elder Scrolls like game, the bugs make sense, and the mere mention of its name, Isles of Adela, will spawn a comment saying that it literally means of Isles in Turkish. Not that many people know its story, but it did gain some attention not that long ago as a Skyrim lookalike. Although unfortunately by then it was already too late because after two crowdfunding campaigns that flopped in a kind of annoying way, it's now sat here on Barry's screen with the last update being 4 years ago. And it's hard not to feel a bit sad about it because it reveals a harsh truth about indie game development. Now to start, originally of Adelar was known as of Arthanos. Same game, they just changed it later for ease of pronunciation. Development began sometime in November 2015 where Kevin Nelson and James Msiano came together to form Peakway Software. The game they were creating was basically an RPG with its own lore and campaign that also supported the tools for usermade content. To what extent that exists today was a bit of a surprise, but we'll see that later. Kevin is still the owner and lead programmer behind this, who at the time already had 10 years of experience, working on games such as Savage Skies, XCOM Genesis, Rootech Invasion, Dinotopia, and Fallen Earth.

[00:01:17]And James was the creative director, PR guy, and designer. At the time, he was a graduate with a degree in simulation and game development. So, basically fresh out of college, but not somebody without any kind of knowledge. This information was revealed during their Kickstarter campaign that was launched later in April 2016. This will be the only time you'll see Kevin on screen, and they attended the East Coast Gaming Conference to promote it in person.

[00:01:43]There didn't seem to be much noise about the game prior to the Kickstarter launch, but after the conference, they released their first devlog where James reflects on feedback, and overall, it went well. A lot of people liked what they saw, but there was a bit of a problem. All they had to show was a level editor. They put out a demo for it, some tutorials, but there was no actual gameplay to sell the idea that this was an RPG with a level editor. And as a result, people basically thought that this was just an RPG builder. Still pretty cool if it was. However, their first trailer was also too long, too technical, and failed to sell the vision of what they were trying to do. So, in response to that, whilst the campaign was still going, they made a shorter version. The goal was quite big.

[00:02:25]$176,000 is a lot to reach for and the stretch goals go even further. Here's the thing, though. During this campaign, activity in the marketing department on the PR side of things didn't seem to go too far. The energy they needed for what they were asking for just wasn't at that level. Perhaps some videos were made private and some links removed, so I couldn't really find much. But when you look at the YouTube channel, probably the strongest place to post content about it. All there was, assuming that they also had the trailer, there were some tutorials for level editing and a couple casual face to camera devlogs.

[00:03:01]Hey, look, ferrets. Perhaps if their dad worked for Blizzard, this would be a different story. Jokes aside, these weren't bad videos. James comes across as a realistic and honest guy, someone who's open to feedback and acting upon it. They weren't completely passive about their marketing either. They at least posted about it on some forums and tried to get in touch with some YouTubers. Back then was about as important as it is today to get your game noticed. They knew this yet for the funding goal they were asking for, they didn't put much on their own channel and overall just didn't make much noise about it. As far as I could search, their attempts to get other people to talk about it didn't seem to yield much in results either. This will become a bit of a common theme later, and there is a reason why I'm bringing this up now. Ultimately, this and the lack of anything else to show outside of the level editor resulted in some interest, but barely enough to succeed. In the end, they didn't get their funding.

[00:03:54]Either way, regardless of failure, they stuck with it, and from June 2016 onwards, a few more devlogs came out, but at an understandably slower rate without funding. These were focused on adding basic gameplay features like, for a start, animations for your character, health, and a survival system that relies on food to keep your stamina intact. Then 4 months after that, they updated the textures, showed some combat with enemies, improved the inventory system, showed off some character customization, and also the ability to make prefabs of buildings to easily copy and paste all over the place. This devlog in particular was quite interesting because they showed off the programmable NPCs where you can basically go inside their head and create logic with nodes. It's a similar case with the dialogue system. And in their own example, if you have an apple in your inventory, this sheep will take notice, and if you give it an apple, it will follow you. You can also choose what dialogue the sheep has, and obviously that could uh that could go anywhere. After this devlog for the following seven months, they also introduced a whole dungeon building system for the level editor, two-player co-op over land connection, basic magic projectiles, maps that also generate to show the level you've built without having to draw anything yourself, and some more large scale scenery like mountains and islands to make levels feel a bit less isolated. During this time, they also received a bunch of feedback from PAX East in 2017. And while watching these devlogs, I noticed a lot of focus on the user, the user experience within the game. To take the user experience or UX seriously requires a lot of consideration and thought for the customer. This is really good to see and quite refreshing to be honest.

[00:05:34]Overall, even though it was kind of slow, post Kickstarter development was still going on. This was just a twoman team at the time, basically working out of pocket to create a game that they promised. Funding was never a requirement to stay motivated, but that never stopped reality from kicking in because this was the last devlog for nearly 2 and 1/2 years. It wasn't until the 6th of October 2019 when they broke silence when of Arthos became of Adelar.

[00:06:02]There was no fair warning, just a trailer that shows what looks to be quite a different game. And this is the point where it basically secured that Elder Scrollsesque vibe. I mean, just look at the comments and you'll see that many people got the same feeling. It's important to highlight this because it became one of the strong selling points, the fact that it looked like an alternative Elder Scrolls game. But unfortunately, it just was never that well utilized. The trailer revealed that you could now wishlist the game on Steam, but also fund it via Indiegogo.

[00:06:30]This trailer wasn't voiced, by the way.

[00:06:32]It was just scenes and features from the game. They followed up the next day with a devlog apologizing for the long silence, saying that there was a lot more to iron out than they initially expected, but now the game has more to it. And to finish off the video, they again promoted the crowdfunding campaign. The campaign page itself sold a similar idea to the Kickstarter. So, not too much changed, but what did was their funding goal. This time it was $275,000 to basically get the game into early access in a polished state. Then from there release and port to consoles. You can see in their pie chart that a lot of money was dedicated to the soundtrack and voice acting, but the majority of it was for additional staff. I think they already knew that this was the thing they needed the most. Similar to before, James understood the importance of getting the game noticed and again reached out to a bunch of YouTubers.

[00:07:25]This time you can actually see some success whether as a result of getting in touch directly or from word of mouth.

[00:07:31]Even if the views are small, combined, a fair amount of channels brought more new eyes to it. Now, the Indiegogo campaign is a bit annoying to look at because even after the Kickstarter flop, you'd think that they'll try a bit harder at promoting it. Originally, the campaign was set to start on the 21st of October, but it was then pushed back to the 10th of November because they wanted to launch it with a stable enough demo.

[00:07:52]Between the alpha gameplay trailer and the campaign announcement, they posted some videos that provided a bit more insight, like this devlog that apologizes for the long silence, basically saying that they got caught up in bug fixing. After that, they released a 17-minute long video where James was in game showing off a bunch of different features. They also released another video about the level editor and a trailer showing off the more refined combat. It's good, honest, and authentic content. However, only one of the videos mentioned anything about the crowdfunding campaign. Even though they didn't have it live by this point, it's always good to remind people or at least make people aware that it's about to happen. And any comments with a link to the page seem to have been done retrospectively. Now, on the 10th of November, when they released both the Steam demo as well as launch the campaign, they made it clear in this video that this was a bit of an ambitious project for two people and that this money would help them get it to early access in a good state. It was very clear that they needed this money to make things go faster. So, when you're asking for a quarter of a million dollars, do you a sit back and rely on word of mouth or b put more content out there, make a bit more noise, and raise awareness when it matters the most?

[00:09:01]Well, unfortunately, after this announcement, they went for option A.

[00:09:04]There were no new videos on their channel, even though these videos do seem to get a decent amount of views.

[00:09:09]Neither did they post anything on Twitter, and the only post that contained a link to the crowdfunding page on Facebook was posted 4 days after the announcement. When you look at it, it all feels a bit too nonchalant. Now, they did have some slightly bigger content creators look at it, and this did help. It's not a bad idea to reach out to YouTubers just to try and get the word out there. But if you know you need funding to focus fulltime on what is a fairly ambitious game, you can't just rely on that. What's worse about all of this is that on the 17th of December, they released a devlog basically saying that people didn't feel motivated enough to fund the project because the goal seemed too hard to reach. I mean, why bother signing up to fund something that doesn't look like it's going to make it anyway? It's a fair enough observation.

[00:09:52]And in response to this, they switched the campaign to flexible funding, which basically means that they get to keep whatever they raised regardless of if they hit the goal or not. And along with this, they extended the campaign by 25 days. In the video itself, you can see that they already achieved $6,157.

[00:10:09]Not bad. However, by the end of the campaign, they only reached $6,777.

[00:10:15]So, in those additional 25 days, they gained an extra $620.

[00:10:20]It's hard to sit here and not point out the fact that the reason behind this is that they basically went cold. There were no new videos, no posts on Twitter or Facebook. No, they thought they did enough. What's annoying about this specifically is that with flexible funding, they would have kept whatever extra they would have made. The issue here is that they just focused on development rather than actually marketing the game any further. It also didn't help that this was a devlog video. What you'll notice about their videos is that the ones with these thumbnails do much better. They actually get more views, whereas the other ones with no brand recognition or anything to spark any kind of curiosity receive significantly less by comparison. Either way, they did manage to make some money.

[00:11:02]However, there wasn't any big congratulations or at least funded with something. No, they just cracked on with it. And on the 1st of February 2020, they were back with a devlog showing further improvements based on the feedback they gathered from the demo.

[00:11:15]After this, they showed off some improvements for character customization to make it look a bit better. And the month after that, there was a bit more progress. Where things get a bit more interesting in terms of gameplay is in May where they introduce stealth mechanics for the first time. This turned out to look pretty cool. I mean, obviously NPCs can see you if you're sneaking around, but they actually have a hearing radius and you can use magic to either deafen them or blind them, so you can easily pickpocket those who aren't asleep. They even went into a fair amount of detail to create proper NPC alert logic. Not just somebody seeing you do something illegal and then immediately attacking you, but civilians to run to an authority figure to report the crime. So just by the look of it, you know it's going to be one of those games where you can have a bit of fun sneaking about. It's pretty basic stuff that you see all the time in games like this. However, it is still nice to see, especially with an indie game, that they're taking the time and care to make it good. On the devlog side of things, there's still no logo in the thumbnail, but we unfortunately get another period of dead silence from May 2020 to nearly a whole year later till February 2021.

[00:12:22]What happened during that time? Well, the socials aren't that much help, but the public Discord and Steam community tab reveals all. It turns out that they got one-shot by bug fixing. The amount of bugs, but also the scale of them. I think we're all old enough to know now that bug fixing is a frustrating thing that can take an unspecified amount of time to do. When you've got a small team, sometimes it requires more than one person to get something sorted, at least in a reasonable amount of time.

[00:12:48]Speaking of the team and the team size, they did eventually get up to three people for a bit. However, that wasn't for too long. Anyway, a bit of a reminder in context to this next bit.

[00:12:58]Their goal, especially in the campaign itself, was to try and get this into early access sometime in summer 2020.

[00:13:06]Now, that didn't quite happen. However, they did get quite close and only really delayed this till October, which considering things isn't too bad of a delay. But you can tell confidence isn't the highest when they make a post saying, "Setting expectations. Should you buy Isles of Adelar?" We wanted to make this post to make sure new players knew what they were getting into before purchasing the game. We only recommend that you buy our game if you are interested in helping to fund development, are interested in learning the level editor and mod tools early, and are interested in bug testing or seeing how the game develops over time firsthand. They then go on to say that the campaign is basically going to be a work in progress, and that for now, co-op will only be two-player. I don't know about you, but nothing about this shouts excitement. It's a brace for impact. It's good to set expectations.

[00:13:56]You don't want to pull the wool over people's eyes. However, it didn't do too much to prevent a mixed response and probably put quite a few people off as a result. It's also really weird to see no launch announcement like, "Hey, this game that we've been working on for years now, regardless of funding difficulties, has finally gone into early access. It's not going to be perfect, but we hope you enjoy." No, it was just released. So, this is the point of the video where I think it's well worth at least looking at early access before we start talking about what happened after. And I've got to be really honest here. I didn't play the game till I got to this point of the script. My expectations were based on what I saw in their own videos. And my god, man, it is not easy to be positive.

[00:14:37]>> Okay, to start off with, I didn't quite realize how bad everything would look till after character customization, which to be fair isn't bad. It's a little cursed looking, but if this is to be considered an Elder Scrolls style game, that's fine. So, of course, I chose to be monkey and began as a necromancer because the thought of summoning Barry into the game is funny.

[00:14:57]However, later I became an archer, and you'll see why. Starting out is simple enough. You're given a tutorial on the basic controls and are introduced quite quickly to the lockpicking system where you need to hit the space bar at the right time enough times to unlock the lock. The inventory system looks good enough. It's easy to understand. You can actually learn spells from books, which is cool. And to be honest, there's not really much else to say here. It works.

[00:15:22]But I do have quite a few comments on about everything else. When I saw the trailers, it looked decent, even if it had that Unity engine vibe to it. So then why does it look like this? Well, the game starts you off on high graphics settings, and high settings don't have much of a draw distance. The issue this game clearly struggles with is optimization. And to be fair, it doesn't look too bad when you max everything out. However, I can't help but notice that even with above recommended specs, the frames struggle unless you pick medium settings. So, for the sake of your eyes, for the sake of your sanity, I kept the settings at medium because I didn't want the recording to be too painful to watch. I do have to say though, I love the direction they were going for. It has a bit more of that Morowind look to it and some of the creatures you find are pretty damn cool, but later there are some oddities and an overall rough edge that feels very outdated. Anyway, what is there to do?

[00:16:19]Well, there is a bit of a campaign to follow, but it's very short. Basically, you find yourself shipwrecked with other survivors from different ships. One of the ships appears to be absolutely massive, and the only way I can explain it being there is that there are giants.

[00:16:33]giants who sail comedically scaled up ships. Apparently, some kind of magic has caused this to happen, and you need to group up together with the other survivors to figure out what the hell is going on. Saving each survivor gives you the option to have them also become a follower for a bit, which is pretty cool. But on the topic of followers, and to keep in theme with the uh water issues we have in these videos, if you go swimming, they just kind of run on the spot until you stop swimming, and then they follow you again. Outside of that, though, the pathing is pretty good. As you make your way across the coastline, you'll have to defeat every creature surrounding each survivor. It's a pretty cool introduction to combat, but the only way to describe combat is weird. It's not hard to understand. It's simple enough. You just swing your weapon, block attacks, kick to stun enemies, and parry, which I couldn't pull off myself. However, because enemies can do the same stuff you do, here's what it looks like when you get parried. The problem with combat is that it's way too chaotic and feels inconsistent. The inconsistency comes from hitting enemies. It's quite difficult to judge the distance, and it does tell you when you hit something with this icon, but that's pretty much the only feedback you get. What I didn't realize at first is that both you and the enemy constantly regenerate health.

[00:17:46]This means that the best strategy to taking on a group of enemies is just to focus on one at a time. I also noticed something a bit weird with the lock on mechanic. This isn't too bad when you're trying to use ranged attacks, but when trying to hit stuff, it's a bit weird.

[00:18:00]You don't actually aim at the enemy and sometimes you spin around. However, you still sometimes hit the enemy. So, technically, it still works. Yet, it's just another thing that highlights how far this game was from being polished and how much they needed that funding.

[00:18:15]Just to add to that point, later when I found a bow and arrow, it seemed to be pretty normal in first person. However, when I went in third person, you might notice that the arrows are coming from somewhere, just not me. The reason why I switched to a bow and arrow, by the way, is because arrows appear to be unlimited.

[00:18:32]And if an enemy can't shoot you back, all you need to do is get the high ground and they freak out. Stealth is something that I couldn't really test out too much because there are no residential areas where you can sneak about and steal stuff. However, there was this camp and sneaking about did seem to work. That is till my follower attracted the attention of the enemies and initiated combat. The weirdest thing about combat in this situation is that the enemy just didn't attack me. They did everything else but actually attack.

[00:19:00]And another weird thing about this camp is that I found this iron ingot. In fact, I'll slow this down because I I I didn't quite notice it till I picked it up. But this iron ingot is not only massive, but it's also magical because if you look away from it and then turn back around, it'll respawn every single time. There is crafting and upgrading in this game, so if you need iron, that's not a problem once you figure this out.

[00:19:23]It might seem like I'm nitpicking here for something that's in early access and clearly underfunded. However, the other person that they got on board was apparently responsible for creating the campaign. And this seemed to be the kind of thing that would have been ironed out quite a long time ago, or at least taken out if it wasn't working in the first place. Dungeons, caves, sewers, and anything underground is a big part to what makes an RPG feel like an adventure. And that's especially the case with any Elder Scrolls game. And I think these guys got close to the feeling of it. They got close to the curiosity that that feeling that you're uncovering a secret. I mean, in one of the dungeons, I found a cooked chicken.

[00:20:01]And this on its own tells a whole story.

[00:20:03]Don't know what that story could be right now cuz this place looks abandoned. Maybe somebody else lives here. But where it fails outside of maybe it not looking too great in some places is on that technical level where you can clearly hear something stuck somewhere. Whereas you've seen many times now, you've got enemies that can get stuck on the spot. But the most annoying thing was how many times the game would crash. This game will tell you when something goes wrong. It'll give you this popup that sometimes you can close, but even if you do close it, it basically means that at some point the game will crash. This prevented me from going into this really cool looking place. I mean, here's the loading screen of it. And here's a glimpse of the place before I got the pop-up. In fact, these levels are so broken that it was difficult to go anywhere else outside of the starting area. Speaking about things breaking, so did the quest line. You see, after rescuing all the survivors, we eventually meet Zanna, the captain of the conveyor, and she's basically the leader of this newly formed squad. We're then sent off to find shelter, which basically means explore the level till something happens. Eventually, I find this massive wall, and when I approach it, I'm ambushed by some scouts who threaten me that if I don't join them, they'll kill me. So I chose to join them. Then I went back to Zana. I told her about it and she made a plan to ambush them. What proceeded after that was an ambush. We were successful and that was it. Nothing else triggered after that. There was still a red circle on the map and clearly I did something wrong. I did try this again, but still the same result. So I decided to move on forwards to see if there was anything else worth looking at. And as I made my way over to the giant wall, I noticed this door leading to a place called Gamber. And Gamber is kind of a depressing place. Immediately, you'll notice this silhouette of a mountain overlapping the scenery. Then you'll notice these rivers that would give any Austin a headache. Then after that, you may notice these red lines floating around the fields. But the saddest thing about this place is the city because when you go over there, you'll see things placed around. However, there's nobody here. It's a ghost town that marks the end of development. It marks the end of development on the campaign.

[00:22:09]And the more you look around, the more you wonder what it could have been like.

[00:22:13]What it could have been like if they had more resources to get this done. Now, a day after early access release, they made it very clear that bug fixing and polishing the game was their top priority before pushing it to press or any more YouTubers. Then after that, they'd focus on the Steam Workshop support. And after that, it depends.

[00:22:29]Nothing else was set in stone. The updates continued at a decent rate considering that they clearly ran out of funding by this point. And it wasn't until February 2021 where they released an announcement trailer for the early access. This came with another devlog detailing the progress and again making it very clear that people should only buy into the early access if they're interested in supporting development.

[00:22:51]These guys are very honest.

[00:22:53]Unfortunately though, these were the last two videos ever posted to their channel. In October that year, Kevin revealed that he had to take on contracting work to pay the bills. And this information was actually known earlier in the Discord. The Discord by this point was public. However, this post kind of made it official.

[00:23:09]Regardless, progress continued till March 2022, but after that there was a near year-long silence till February 2023. All of a sudden, the years are starting to go by faster. And this silence was broken by what I would say to be quite an important post where Kevin addresses the community. Dear Alsar community, I would like to take a moment to express my appreciation for your support and to provide an update on the status of the game. I regret to inform you that I've not been able to post updates over the past year. In April 2021, my partner stepped away from the project and I took on additional work to make ends meet. As a result, progress on the game was slow and I was unable to work on it full-time. However, I am excited to announce that I'm now working on a new, smaller game. This game is a single player turn-based rogike dungeon crawler that I hope to have completed by 2024. I'm using this opportunity to apply what I've learned and develop a plan for addressing some of the challenges in Isisles of Adelar.

[00:24:02]My goal is to generate enough revenue from this project to hopefully return to Ars of Adela. I am currently not seeking funding or volunteers as I simply need time to work on the game. With this post came the understanding that this wasn't the best news to hear and he also linked a video that shows that the game still had quite a lot of interest. A lot of people when they see it like the look of it, but unfortunately by this point it was already too late. I think we're all wise enough to know that if the completion of one game relies on the success of another, then it's probably never going to happen. It might seem noble not to accept additional funding or help. And I understand why they wouldn't, but only because it prevents any renewed commitment. By saying this, you don't tie yourself into a new promise. Also, just to add, I did try to find this game he was talking about.

[00:24:47]However, because there was no name to it, I just couldn't find anything. As it stands now, the last community post is in February 2024, where Kevin revealed that the game was being ported over to Unreal Engine 5. With this, he also came to the realization that working on the level editor was too much work. So instead, if you want to make levels, you'd basically have to learn a bit of Unreal Engine, which to be fair, as somebody who uses it myself for these desk moments, it's a cool introduction to a bit of gamedev. Looking at the state of the level editor, you can see the effort they put in. However, it's very clear that it's got a long way to go in terms of polish, and I think for one person at the moment, it's fair enough to drop it. Although, of that being said, this was a big part of the selling point. So, it wasn't the best news. You know, this game represents the importance and harsh reality of marketing a game. Most developers aren't lucky enough to be blessed by the algorithm or shot into space by some YouTuber. No, they have to take on many jobs and marketing is one of them. In fact, most developers use free time after work and other responsibilities to try their best just to make something.

[00:25:52]And for many, that's okay. But getting funded one way or another allows you to go full-time and accelerate whatever success story or flop you're in the process of. I'm not saying that these guys would have made it if they had more money or would have secured their desired funding goal if they marketed their game better. However, I do have to be blunt and say that they didn't have their priorities straight during the campaign and relied way too much on early access. Their goal was to make it into early access. Yet, it became clear that they needed that funding to get it into a more polished state. It's fine to say that you can do without. You just need to be realistic with the time you have and not underestimate the endless task of bug fixing. Otherwise, it's those who hoped that lose out when the months turn into many years. What's annoying to see is that it had some traction, some interest, yet they didn't do much to capture more of it. Word of mouth from YouTubers is great, as seen much later by the video from Full Damage. However, you can't rely on it.

[00:26:48]You've got to do a lot more on your side. What's also annoying about this, and genuinely, I wasn't expecting to reference Dreamw World again straight after covering it, but is that you're not just competing for people's attention with other well-intentioned developers, is that you're up against an unfair playing field. you're up against people with money for ads and no shame in selling an idea without any idea or real proof of concept to create said idea. In hindsight, I was quite light on Dreamworld after hearing about the refund offers and to be honest, how low the bar was set. Yet, it can never be forgotten that those guys, as well as others and many more to come, know how to play the game of selling a dream and drawing wealth from the pool of potential backers away from legit projects like this. Peekway Software didn't succeed in the way that they wanted. However, their persistence is to be admired. So is their honesty. This isn't a story of people trying to scam anyone. It's a story about overestimating available resources, failing to capture the hype when it's needed the most, and as a result, things taking too long to a point where some people were let down in the process.

[00:27:52]Anyway, that's all I've got to say, and if you enjoy this video, consider giving it a like. Massive thanks to all of the members of this channel and supporters on Patreon who provide cans of fish for my cat who by community vote is now named Whizkers. I see what you did there. If you'd like to add to the pile or just further support these videos, then consider joining as a member here or on Patreon. If not, no worries. But finally, a big shout out to those with many cans. Gibbles by the Dozen, The Cuddlybot, Negadan, The One with Severed Toes, Abby the Meatly, Dorm Trollfist, Basto, Ali Dolair, Spooky, King Delirious, Bob the Brontos, Scotched Eggs, Big Ram, Grimber, Letter Openers or MP3, Julie, Rowan Desane, I don't fit through doorways, Borky again, J and Pagos. Oh, and I'm back in the UK now.