
Your Eldritch Sovereign Leader
I can't think of any games where you can customize your own monstrous Eldritch leader, so we had a lot of fun exploring what this could mean and look like. To start and hit the ground running we took the existing Lost Mage unit as a base and built on top of it. Making sure the unit always floats and doesn't hold any weapons (albeit a Relic hovering in front) meant we were freed from many animation restraints and could really push the silhouettes and bodies of the leaders. Tentacles are cool, but what other variations could we push? Folded moth wings instead of arms, a mermaid or sinew body, and insectoid legs, we tried to fulfill different eldritch fantasies. We started off with blue sky sketches exploring possibilities -










The Umbral Abyss
For this fleshy DLC we wanted to lean into the heritage of Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic and bring back the much-beloved shadow realm, now known as the Umbral Abyss. Your new realm layer is setup in the frontend and in-game can be accessed by none other than a tentacle entrance :) They are essentially portals to the other world layers or between other floating Umbral Islands. The icon above the portal shows you where it leads. Notice how the Umbral biome leaks through these portals, infecting other lands -



New Locations
We’ve added a lot of new locations to the Umbral Layer, from Visit Sites with fun visuals and properties, to powerful Nodes and a new Magic Material. We threw in some shiney Pickups to boot so the Umbral Abyss is a treasure trove of places ready to be looted. This gives the new layer a distinct feel and reason to enter. Games are not a static medium, when creating new ideas we try to push visuals with the help of particle effects, shaders and animation. Motion is an added element that breathes life into otherwise static objects, and importantly helps with readability by drawing our attention to it. For instance see how we are adding motion to these new province improvements below -








Eldritch Dwelling
For this DLC we made the foundations of a new system that supports unique monsters as Dwelling Rulers. We might expand upon this system down the line allowing you to interact with wildlife Monsters like Giants, Ogres and more as they rule their own Dwelling or as recruitable heroes themselves. The Eldritch Hive comes to life, with its own monstrous leader, what dark trades can be made here? Inspired by termite spires, and a nod to the Planetfall Kirko cities, the Umbral Dwellings act as the beating heart of the Abyss -


Umbral Tactical Layer
The biome also comes with its own flavour of vegetation, from trees to small plants. Shown here are some early concepts for trees, fleshy tendrils and twisted coral-like shapes. We have limitations so units can still stand around the base and use them for partial cover. You can see how the rough concepts got translated into 3D through iteration -







Your Forms
Fans of Age of Wonders past might recognise these 2 new forms; we brought back the fan favourite insectoid, and the Syron, albeit reimagined -The Syron
The game already has a lot of monstrous and gritty forms, with Eldritch Realms we wanted to introduce a counter to that with a beautiful form - the Syron. A race from previous game entries resembling elves. Instead of going down that road (since we already have elves) we decided to pivot them in a different direction. Initially, we leaned into something more aquatic with a squid-like form that would compliment the Eldritch leaders with strange tropical fish-like patterns or glowing deep-sea features that resembled stars -



Shadow Demons? Kir’ko? Insectoid!
Insectoid creatures have been a long-running feature in Age of Wonders, from the Shadow Demons of AoW:Shadow Magic, that inspired the Planetfall Kir’ko, we come full circle, bringing them back in Eldritch Realms. With this new Insectoid form you can use transformations to turn them into the original Shadow Demons, or angels, or undead etc. -
Your new Story Realms
We made 17 new illustrations for the 2 new story realms, really focussing on character-driven composition with vibrant colour design. Below is a sneak peek of 2, what do you think is happening here?

Your new Events
To flavour the new Cosmic Happening events we ended up creating a new fullscreen UI. We leaned into the Empire Tree smokey tendrils as if everything is interconnected through its shadowy branches. Everything here is animated and moving from the stars and dark tendrils to the runes making the whole scene comes to life -






Your Wildlife
You guessed it, MORE TENTACLES! Since the Umbral Abyss is quite a dark place filled with gloom, we decided to make sure the wildlife were lighter in value - pale and fleshy with glowing hotpink kicks of colour. This way they would be readable on top of the new biome. Below we have a selection of some of the new creatures at different stages of production, through to an in-game model -



Your Icons & Interface
I’d like to take some time here to highlight iconography and interface. What I find astounding is that every icon here represents a new gameplay concept with localized descriptive tooltips, and coded gameplay. There might also be additional animation or particle FX with bespoke audio -


Bonus
New Eldritch-themed Pantheon content to unlock…
