(If the embed above stops working, the launch trailer is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQySmFfZlU.)
Long before FromSoftware made a fortune telling players to git gud, it made King’s Field: slow, first-person PlayStation dungeon crawls from the mid-1990s in which every corridor wanted you dead and the frame rate seemed to agree. Thirty-odd years on, the Queen has come to claim the throne. Queen’s Domain, a retro-fantasy action RPG from the two-person indie outfit Freshly Baked Games, published by Future Friends Games (CloverPit, Exo One), launched on 30 October on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2. Owners of the original Switch are out of luck.
The set-up is pure King’s Field minimalism. You wash up on the Isle of Neasied looking for your father, who vanished with an earlier expedition, while an ancient necromancer queen begins to stir somewhere in the depths. Combat is built on a classic stamina meter, charged attacks, weapon-specific specials and throwing weapons, with more than 50 melee weapons and around 100 enemies spread across an interconnected island full of hidden paths. Its own big idea is the Holy Sword Endu, which lets you fly from platform to platform and can be upgraded to fly further. Excalibur as a jet pack, in other words. King Arthur never had it so good, and nor did anyone in King’s Field.
The numbers say this isn’t purely a niche nostalgia project. The game racked up some 300,000 Steam wishlists, the free demo has sat on Steam since December 2025 with a Very Positive rating from more than 850 reviews, and launch day reportedly brought more than 3,500 concurrent players within hours. It’s priced at around £16 or $20, with a 15% discount during launch week, and it’s Steam Deck verified. Early write-ups have been warm, with at least one calling it a true successor rather than a tribute. We haven’t played the full game yet, so treat that as other people’s enthusiasm rather than ours. If you want to judge for yourself, it’s on Steam and the console stores now.
It’s part of a broader revival of FromSoftware’s pre-Souls era, with indies such as Lunacid mining the same seam of murky first-person dread. Three decades after King’s Field taught a generation to fear the next doorway, somebody has built a fresh labyrinth to be frightened in, and this time the sword can fly. Progress, of a sort.
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