Astral viking city-builder Roots Of Yggdrasil sprouts a 1.0 release date

Our former editor Katharine "Thorsbane" Castle has long since quit these turgid shores for the sunny uplands of Eurogamer, where the consoles multiply like rabbits, but her legacy endures. For instance, it's thanks to her that I know and am excited about Roots of Yggdrasil, a roguelike deck-and-city-builder which casts you as a posse of vikings in a flying longship, touching down on floating islands to found a quick settlement and harvest some magic before the apocalypse - here known as the Ginnungagap, a swirling purple void - catches up with them.

Katharine called it "a real grower" before the early access release in January, likening it to both Dorfromantik and The Banished Vault - a chalk and cheese comparison if ever I heard one. Well rejoice, perverted chalk-and-cheese mixers, because Roots of Yggdrasil now has a 1.0 release date - 6th September 2024.

"We had planned another patch before releasing 1.0, but as we worked on it, we realized bundling all the changes together made way more sense," developers ManaVoid Entertainment comment in a Steam post. "That means the next patch is going to be BIG." Here's what you can expect: new events, including new characters to bandy words with from biome to biome, and new Runic Stones, which can be used to add keywords to your cards. For example, if you stick "Retain" on a card, it'll stay in your hand at the end of your turn.

There will be new building cards, too, such as raiding camp and cart maker, and a fourth playable scion to unlock, with their own story and quest. Existing characters will get endings for their story quests. Quality of life improvements include cleaned-up scion blurbs when preparing for each run, and a clearer presentation of whether your scion or housing will level up if you succeed at a trial.

They've also rebalanced the Holt environment that forms the persistent and evolving staging area for this particular roguelike. "Overall, we felt the progression was a bit too slow and also too restrictive," the devs explain. "Expect less requirements on Holt buildings in the future and more ways to obtain amenity tags. We also don't plan to wipe anything, so if a building you placed gets rebalanced, you'll be able to simply remove it and replace it elsewhere if you prefer!"

All this comes with the caution that the game's price will increase "slightly" when it leaves early access. But there will be a launch discount, too, so you hopefully won't suffer if you hold off till September. Anybody here played this recently? How has the early access build come along since Katharine's day?