Beloved turn-based strategy series Heroes of Might and Magic suffered a renaming six games in, with the last two entries known officially as Might and Magic: Heroes 6 and 7 just to mess with the order of your library. Publishers Ubisoft have relented though, and gone back to the HoMM naming convention for the next in the series, the recently announced prequel Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era.
It’s being developed by Unfrozen, the studio behind Iratus: Lord of the Dead. That game demonstrated their ability to recreate Darkest Dungeon with a twist, so the studio seems like a decent choice for recreating HoMM 3, which is what Olden Era is most reminiscent of at first glance.
One thing that’s different about Olden Era is the launch strategy. It’ll be coming out in early access to give time for community feedback (of which I’m sure there will be plenty), and balancing. While it promises to have a singleplayer story campaign set on Enroth’s continent of Jadame before the events of the first game in the series, the focus is on multiplayer, with a classic multihero mode as well as a 1-hero mode for shorter games. If you want an even shorter match there will be a mode called arena that’s a bit like drafting in Magic: The Gathering, only instead of choosing cards from boosters you’re choosing a hero, units, upgrades, and artifacts from a random selection.
Olden Era will have six playable factions with more to be added as DLC, and a map editor. Local multiplayer hasn’t been mentioned yet, but I hope it’s included because hot-seat games were my way into the series way back when. The release date is currently set for the second quarter of 2025, and you can wishlist it on Steam.
