Drakantos
About the game
Drakantos is a free-to-play MMORPG with a top-down view and 16-bit pixel art, made by Brazilian studio Wingeon Game Studios. Its pitch is easy to state and hard to pull off: the look of nineties console JRPGs —the studio names Chrono Trigger among its touchstones— crossed with modern action combat. No turns, no cooldown bars to stare at: you aim, you dodge and you chain abilities in real time, moving freely around the map.
Heroes instead of classes
Rather than picking a class and building it from scratch, you choose from twenty-plus heroes, each with its own ability kit and its own story arc inside the world. On top of that sits a customization layer of orbs and artifacts that lets you take the same character in different directions, so two players on the same hero don't necessarily play alike. It lands halfway between the fixed roster of a hero game and the build freedom of a classic MMO.
Eldras is meant to be played with company
The world of Eldras is built around playing together rather than adventuring alone. There are dungeons that shuffle enemies and objectives between runs, timed world bosses, global events, guilds, player housing and a player-run market. PvP is a stated pillar of the design rather than a late addition: it arrived with three modes across thirteen maps and ranked ladders. The structure, in short, is that of a full MMO; what departs from the genre norm is how you fight.
Where it stands: closed betas, no date
The single most important thing to know: Drakantos isn't out yet. Its Steam page lists it as coming soon and no release date has been announced. Development moves through closed betas: the first ran in July 2025 and the second in May 2026, and that second one brought fewer new features than foundational rewrites —grid movement was dropped in favor of free movement, the hybrid system gave way to full action combat, mouse controls were rebuilt and PvP made its debut. Between tests the game isn't playable, so there's no population figure or current patch to speak of; the only real gauge is pre-release interest, which passed half a million Steam wishlists. The studio has also announced a mobile version, with no window attached. The cadence so far is one large beta per year, iterating on core systems instead of committing to a calendar.
What you pay for, and what you don't
The game is free, with no cost of entry: there are no editions, founder packs or announced prices, and no free trial is needed because the whole thing will be free. Steam lists in-game purchases, but the studio hasn't confirmed the details yet. All Wingeon has shared publicly are preliminary ideas: a monthly convenience subscription to help keep the servers running, a premium currency to speed up hero unlocks —heroes you can also earn by playing, on a scheme the studio itself compares to free-to-play hero games— and cosmetics like skins, mounts, pets and emotes, most of which they'd rather have players earn than buy. The stated position is that no combat advantages will be sold. None of this is final, so until the store opens any figure is guesswork: it's the thing to watch before launch.
Why play it (and why wait)
Drakantos aims at a fairly specific audience: people who grew up on top-down JRPGs and want that look with today's controls, and anyone after an action MMO that plays well in a group without the solemnity of the genre's giants. Being free, with a studio that has committed to not selling power, makes it an easy proposition to try — on paper, at least. The flip side is worth stating plainly: there's nothing playable outside the beta windows, there's no date, the business model isn't settled, and this is an indie with a small team facing the usual question — whether it can sustain the content cadence an MMO demands once the doors open. As a promise it's one of the most appealing things happening in online pixel art; as a game, it's still something to wait for.