As soon as Emberville popped up on my radar, backed by over a dozen or so familiar voice actors, I knew I had to check it out for myself. This pixelated action RPG is an indie title that feels like if Diablo and Stardew Valley had a child. This preview only allowed me to play the short prologue, but it was enough time to tell the potential that Emberville could have upon its Early Access release.
A quick look at Emberville
The preview for Emberville starts with you customizing your character and waking up in a strange prison filled with mysterious, hostile creatures. I immediately got the sense that I would be defeating enemies and collecting loot in hopes of constantly upgrading my kit. The adorable top-down art style makes combat a lot more manageable, especially when I could decide which weapons I wanted to focus on upgrading.
Emberville is all about experimenting with weapons, finding the one that works for you, then leveling up your skill with that weapon while exploring dungeons to unlock new abilities. It works the same with the armor you wear and the classes you eventually get to choose from, and I could sense a lot of possibilities between weapon and class combinations. I’m not sure yet if certain classes will require specific weapons or if you’re free to use whatever, but there’s a lot of potential here for unique combinations.
Still, I felt combat to be a little stilted and difficult when facing off against a group of enemies or a large boss. While still just in the prologue and wielding a level two weapon, I faced off against a monstrous spider boss called Spider Matriarch that was extremely tanky. It could heal itself by eating what looked like its own spider eggs, and meanwhile, one of my more powerful attacks stopped working whenever I tried pressing its shortcut on my hotbar. Combat still had a long way to go, but there’s something here even in its Early Access stage that felt good at times.
As for the incredible cast that’s behind this game, I only got a glimpse of some of the familiar voices in my preview. It was a delight to hear a voice behind every NPC I met, and I could tell I was only scratching the surface of the characters of Emberville. Right at the end of the preview, I met a goblin-like creature whom I immediately recognized as Matthew Mercer, which makes me excited to meet all the other characters whose voices I’ll recognize.
Emberville is lore and dialogue-heavy, which made it a little difficult to follow everything thrown at me in the first 50 minutes of the game. I would constantly come across notes and journal entries that built upon the story of what was going on in this magical society, but I found it hard to stay focused and take in everything I’d learnt after reading multiple pages’ worth of notes along my way through the prison.
Overall, Emberville was more put together than I’d thought for a preview of an Early Access game, and it shows a lot of potential for an indie game that takes elements of Diablo and Stardew Valley, among other dungeon-crawling and farming simulation games, and makes it into its own unique project.
I didn’t get the chance to see the town-building and farming parts of Emberville, but I hope that it’s interesting enough to keep players engaged when they’re not in combat. Nevertheless, I’m definitely keeping my eyes on this game as it enters Early Access this fall.
Emberville launches in Early Access on October 27, 2026, on Steam.
