24-Year-Old Game 'UnReal World' Gets Steam Release This Week

Finnish developer Sami Maaranen has been working on rogue-like survival role-playing game (RPG) UnReal World since its initial release back in 1992. What started as version 1.00 for ASCII back then will hit Valve's digital distribution platform Steam this week as version 3.30, the publisher has announced.

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As ought to be expected with such a long-term project, the game has undergone massive changes and complete rewrites in its time. The graphics have been overhauled for its most recent release on Friday with the help of co-designer Erkka Lehmus, although the game admittedly still looks dated considering its origin. When the game first released, it was without any sound effects. Music became a part of UnReal World between 1996 and 1998, as the graphics went from ASCII characters to a sprite-based display.

A few years later, the game moved on from DOS to Windows, and was finally ported over to native Windows in 2005. The game's current major release - version 3.00 - appeared nine years ago. Since then, UnReal World has changed its sound design and user interface among other things. AI for non-playable characters (NPCs) was changed twice from 2007-09, and it helped expand the range of conversation for players. 2009 also brought what Maaranen labelled "one of the biggest core element overhauls in history of the game" as the developer redefined the terrain system which also saw the game world expand to six times its size.

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With version 3.15, UnReal World introduced a significant change: the game become free to play. Alongside that, Maaranen released the most number of releases in 2013. You can either get the game from its official website or wait for it to appear on Steam on Friday, for Rs. 389.