Wow, just wow. What a year has 2025 been! I got my driving license, held my wedding and progressed on so many more things. More importantly for you, a lot has happened to Erios this year! I will be highlighting each of the major features that were implemented this year, so grab a fresh cup of tea, as this is a long one!
Erios in Numbers 2025
Let’s get our 2025 recap started with some magic numbers! Not sure if they are meaningful to you, but hey, they are numbers, go look at them!
| Category | Magic Number |
|---|---|
| Forum Posts | 1 |
| Blog Posts | 2 |
| Discord Messages | 1043 |
| Youtube Views | 154 |
| Website Views | 391 |
| Twitter Views | this is a paid feature for some reason lol, so we will never know~ |
| Commits | 191 |
| Lines of code written | 50819 |
| Playtesters | 6 |
| Alpha Releases (How many builds that were shared with the playtesters through Steam) | 14 |
Feature Recap
A lot has been implemented in Erios in 2025! Let’s highlight the major features first, and then briefly go over everything else!
Hero Menu
Previously, you’d just have a save file, and that’s it. Your character lives within the save file, yet that has changed with the introduction of the Hero Menu!
You can now create multiple characters, and switch between them through the Squad Menu. The same character will now be used for the campaign, challenge, gamemode and alternative ways of playing Erios. Save files are now stored per character. Create as many as you want, but know that “Lithrun the Man” will always be my main.
Inventory & Equipment
At the start of 2025 I finished up the inventory & equipment system. There are 21 equipment slots, varying from your helmet, shoulders, chest, 3 weaponry slots and 4 item slots. There isn’t a weight limit in Erios, so you can carry with you whatever you want. As there will be hundreds of items, the inventory system features a primary & secondary item category filtering system. For instance you can filter on “Apparel” (Primary) and then use the secondary filter to search on Helmet. Then you’d only see helmets within your inventory. There’s even a search option where you can type the name of the item. Additional filtering options will be introduced in 2026 (favorite items, making equipment sets)
Skills: Mining & Alchemy
Skills are a major part of Erios. You can see a skill as some sort of minigame within the game, that is optional to progress in, yet it will offer great rewards. 15 skills are planned, and 2 of those were implemented this year: Mining & Alchemy. Each skill will have its own unique features to make them interesting.
Mining
Mining. You dig an ore node, and you retrieve ore & stone from them. Mining is probably the most basic skill as that’s all that comes to it in mining. The higher your mining level, the more ores you will retrieve. Additionally, mining also features a Ore Mastery track.
In addition to a mining level, you can also level up your ore mastery for every type of ore that you find. It is developed up by mining that specific ore from a mining vein. Find 100 ore of the same type, and you will unlock “Mastery I”, which will give you double the ore of that type!
Alchemy
Alchemy, now this one took a while, but I am very glad with how it turned out! Every item in Erios has traits, which can be discovered through alchemy. Let’s take an apple as an example, which has a “Sweet” tag. At first you might think, nice, a sweet apple, but what does sweet do? And well, that’s what you can discover with alchemy! Mix some items that are sweet, and you will get a potion that reveals the effects of Sweet.
Mixing two “Sweet” items would result in a potion that heals for 2HP over 10 seconds. Not the strongest, so you will have to find something better than an apple…
The fun part about alchemy, is that you can use any item with it. As the potion is created based on the alchemic trait effects. With a lower alchemy level you can only mix two items, but later you can even mix up to 3 items! Endless combinations, have fun mixing, and crafting powerful potions!
Mod Editor Improvements
I consider mod support essential for the longevity of Erios. Even if I will be unable to provide updates to the game anymore for whatever reason (probably if I die, so let’s hope I live a long life). Then the community is still able to add new content to the game. Erios is a massive world, and I have big plans for free community made DLC like updates. Anyhow, because of this, I have setup Erios in a generic way so that it is extensible. Levels, items, quests are all setup in a way that mods will also be able to add & edit these.
I’m especially happy with the code editor improvements:
Code Editor Improvements
Erios features an in-game mod editor, and that even includes an in-game code editor. So within the game, you can essentially extend the game. Like making a game within a game technically. Gameception.
Before the code editor was just a plain text editor, yet it has now received major upgrades. Like the syntax highlighting as seen in the image. This allows mod developers to directly see the available documentation of Erios within the editor itself.
Note: you can also read this documentation at the website link
Additionally there is now also an error highlighter. So the code editor will now verify whether the Lunaris code you wrote is valid or not.
Erios Card Game
Back in 2019 I designed a complete card game. That was fun, yet sadly my priorities changed and I was never able to create that card game. This year I got back into my long forgotten hobby: card games! Anyone wants to play LOTR:LCG? Well, how about the Erios Card Game instead!
The card game has been added into the game, and is now officially part of Erios. I did make some changes to the design after some playtesting, but in its core things are still the same. The card game offers both a PvP & PvE gamemode (Multiplayer mode isn’t available yet unfortunately).
As this is a recap, I will try to keep it brief. You play with 1 to 3 hero cards. Each hero cards has a “Shadow” cost. Every turn your Shadow counter increased by +1. Once your Shadow reaches 50, or all your heroes are defeated, you lose.
There are 3 phases:
- Ready Phase (This is done automatically. The cards will ready, first player token changes, each player draws a card and heroes gain a resource token)
- Planning Phase (You can play cards by spending resources from heroes, and choose to assign defenders)
- Action Phase (Any defending card must be defeated first, then other cards can be damaged. Defense stat only counts when defending, yet defenders are also exhausted thus cannot attack)
There’s multiple card types which adds depth & strategy to the game. For 2026? You will be able to find cards as collectibles, play against NPCs and craft your own decks.
And so much more
So much has been implemented this year. Each of the following items deserved their own in-depth section, yet this blog post will get way too long for that. If you wish to learn more about these, feel free to send me a message on discord or the forums, and we can go into depth!
- NPC Scheduling & Task system (NPCs follow a daily routine, yet dynamic tasks can also be queued by quests, events or the player. This will make the world feel alive)
- Rivers (Yes you can actually float on them)
- New interactables:
- Boats
- Books
- Torch
- Save File Data Migrations (If a breaking change is introduced, then save files can be upgraded to support the new game version. This is done automatically based on the version of the saveFile)
- Dynamic Events System (Every in-game hour a random event could occur)
- Quests System (The entire quest system was implemented, for 2026 I will be adding some cool quests which will fully highlight this system)
- Editors: Quest Editor, Character Editor, Item Editor (these are currently only available internally, but will later also be added to the mod editor)
- Colorblind filters (If you have a form of color blindness, contact me, as I’d want to finetune these filters to make the game for accessible to you!)
- Fancy sky shader
- Updating Godot Versions (In January I started with Godot 4.2 yet whenever a Godot update is available I try to update to take advantage over the latest of the latest features. Now we are on Godot 4.6 beta-2!)
- Benchmarks system: Allowing anyone to run some in-game benchmarks to measure the numbers and percentages, and trying to improve these
- Gamemodes. Erios features 4 way of playing the game: Campaign, Challenges, Gamemodes & Adventure. Gamemodes should be seen as a sandbox, with certain gamemodes that you can play. The one I added is Waves, where endless waves of enemies will spawn, and it’s your objective to survive for as long as possible. 2026 will introduce the racing gamemode, gotta go fast~
- Website: Automatically generated progress page, as manually updating this is time consuming. It’s now generated based on my task list
- Tutorial! Yes, Erios now actually has a tutorial quest. Basic, but it’s there. Written in Lunaris
- Level Transitioning. No loading screens when switching between levels, instead the level is loaded on the background. So two levels can be active at the same time for a brief moment (You will see with the CAVE)
- Level chunking (Big levels are divided in chunks, and LOD is applied based on where you are. Far away objects are unloaded, high frames for you)
- Various Performance improvements. These can be very time consuming, but I am trying where possible to make things run as smoothly as possible. Always more to improve here~
Message from the developer
As always, thank you so much for being part of Erios this year! This year marked the 10th year anniversary of Erios. Time flies to quickly doesn’t it? Back in 2015 I wanted to make this game, and now every day that dream gets closer and closer to completion. We are not there yet however!
As 2026 will be a year of challenges, yet I shall do what I do best, and introduce many more features into Erios! Becareful with fireworks, as your hands are to last a century. See you in the 2026 blog post, which will actually be in january! Featuring a new quest taking place in a dark cavern~
- Lithrun