Russian Developer Shows Remake of Arcanum on Unity Engine

The project is already playable, but certain elements still require refinement.

Many players still remember the 2001 role-playing game Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura from Troika Games, which offered an intriguing world and gameplay mechanics.

Developer Andrey “Suvitruf” Apanasik recently published a development diary about working on an Arcanum remake. He is using the Unity engine alongside modern artificial intelligence technologies such as Claude (Fable).

According to the developer, the project is already playable in its current state:

You can start the game, allocate stats, and then progress through the story by completing quests and so on. The dialogue system works, and it even accounts for parameters that influence different dialogue branches and the outcome of the dialogue itself. For example, a conditional “charm” stat affects whether you can invite characters into your party or not. The companion system itself is also hooked up, along with some of the functionality related to it.

Players will be able to exchange items with companions, change weapons, and swap gear. An inventory and loot system has also been implemented for this purpose.

The basic combat system “works at least for the player character,” who can use spells. NPCs are a bit more complex as they can currently “only swing weapons”:

Combat is already implemented in both turn-based and real-time modes. Essentially, it was enough to implement one, while the second conceptual mode differs purely by a flag.

The source code for the “unity-arcanum” project will be published in Suvitruf’s repository. Game assets are not included in the package, so players will need to locate files from Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura to run it.

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