Developer OnceLost Games has decided to make a serious change to how it goes about creating its upcoming fantasy RPG, The Wayward Realms. In a new Steam blog post, the studio has revealed that it's doing away with Unreal Engine to instead make the game on its own proprietary technology that will increase its flexibility and otherwise "positions us to deliver a far better game."
The full statement explains that recent fan feedback about the project has led to the change, and seemingly for the better, as OnceLost addresses how this will improve the overall whole.
It's noted that their own engine will enable the game to run at 30+ FPS on "decade-old laptops without dedicated GPUs" and that it will even support the same frame rate on the first-generation Nintendo Switch, meaning console support won't be a problem. Adding to this is a map that is "four times the size of Manhattan" loading in under one second and offering an almost instant start, a load time for the entire engine that clocks 300 milliseconds (which has "already more than doubled our development speed"), and full community modding support being offered too.
While this is all exciting, the catch is that such a big change will mean that the game is now behind schedule and won't be made available to Kickstarter backers until June 2026, and then a public Early Access period in the months afterwards. Still, expect further updates on the game as of December 3.