Forget about another WoW Classic run, this new, F2P dungeon-crawler MMO is a modern take on '90s online adventures

Care to kick off your new year with another potentially massive waste of time? I mean that in a good way. The best way, actually. As someone who benched their annual festive WoW Classic play for a renewed stab at Old School Runescape, if my Hardcore Ironman team doesn’t materialize in the next couple of days, Dreadmyst, a new indie MMO in the style of ’90s isometric point and click adventures, might become my next obsession. And with plenty more to come, it could very well be shaped into one of the best MMORPGs of the new year.

Dreadmyst, a solo endeavour from developer dreadmyst.com and, checks notes… publisher dreadmyst.com (way to get that domain out there, fella), is “an online fantasy RPG running on its own engine.” Why that’s the important part isn’t entirely clear right out of the gate, but just look at it – it’s an Ultima-like that you’d expect to see on a yellowed Packard Bell behemoth of a Microsoft Excel machine buried in your grandparents’ basement. In 2026, no less.

Now, does the promotional shot of a player getting hounded in a large and sandy square arena appeal to me? No, not really. I still feel a deep sense of dread whenever I see the Duel Arena in Runescape, and the idea of PvP in a game like this really feels like a throwback to that painful period of learning the hard way that I can’t hold my own in a winner-takes-all duel to the death.

But casting fireballs in the forest? Kiting a swarm of bats around a dungeon hopefully filled to the brim with loot, but more likely stuffed full of death and disappointment? That’s my jam. And that’s what the carefully curated shots on Dreadmyst’s Steam page is happy to strategically feed into my eyeballs.

With a simple premise of just four classes (Paladin, Mage, Archer, and Cleric) to level and gear up, the reception to the surprise release of Dreadmyst seems to be going down rather well, with the game sitting at ‘mostly positive’ reviews with over 200 thumbs up or down submitted. Some early player reactions quotes include, “Hella fun,” “lots of drops,” and tab-target combat that “feels great,” with one special callout to any bad reviews being “from entitled little ******* crying about a free MMO made by ONE PERSON not working perfectly on launch day,” which is a very valid criticism of criticism if you ask me. Ok, I lied – they’re all quotes from one short and sweet review.

If we look at a couple of others, we have shade being thrown to a certain other MMORPG that should have been massive by now. “Game made by one dev already has more quests than Ashes of Creation,” says one, while another claims it has “better netcode” than the aforementioned December 2025 Early Access release that’s still sat on ‘mixed’ reviews.

At the end of the day, Dreadmyst appears to be a retro-inspired MMORPG that simply asks that you let yourself be immersed in the great unknown. Objectives are left purposefully vague, but you can always trust a town guard to point you toward your next adventure. Its two dungeons are rife with loot, but they’re “no joke” at max level, says one early player, with consumable keys needed to attempt them time and again, adding to the hardcore, group-based RPG grind that’s since been lost to our waning levels of free time. Welcome back, entire evenings spent trying to find a competent group that won’t disband before filling up! How I’ve missed you.

Dreadmyst is available on Steam for free. You can download it here to jump right in with the rest of the launch legion. With an update this time next week set to bring “a new dungeon and the first phase of a crafting system inspired by Diablo 2’s Horadric Cube,” there’s a bright future ahead for this solo attempt to bring a little friction back to the MMORPG genre.