Heroes of Might and Magic is one of those dependable fantasy game series that feels like it’s always been around. But its glories are faded, and it’s battered and careworn from being shoved and bundled from developer to developer, publisher to publisher, over 30 years. Under its current publisher, Ubisoft, it suffered the indignity of a pointless name change (to Might & Magic Heroes), and has been left to go fallow since the seventh game was released 10 years ago.
Time for a 30th anniversary comeback, then, for this venerable series of fantasy strategy games. Happily, Ubisoft has made some very smart decisions regarding how to go about it. Firstly, the proper title is back. Secondly, it has admitted that it does not know what it is doing with what will never be more than the 10th most important franchise in its vault, and has summoned some specialist help.
In this case, that’s Hooded Horse, an indie publisher specializing in strategy games, city-builders, and the like. Hooded Horse has made a name for itself on Steam recently with the smash hit medieval city-builder Manor Lords and the acclaimed Against the Storm. It knows the audience, and is great at working with small developers. For Might and Magic, the developer is Unfrozen, a remote team with a passion for old-school gaming working out of places like Cyprus, Uzbekistan, and Serbia.
The result is Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. That subtitle refers to the fact that it’s a prequel to the existing series, taking place earlier in the timeline, but also heavily hints at its status as an unapologetic throwback. Recalling the late-’90s glory days of Heroes of Might and Magic 3: The Restoration of Erathia, Olden Era is a deeply nostalgic and soothing gaming experience rendered with exactly the right amount of modern polish — enough to make it sturdy and smooth to play, but not so much as to remove the attractive patina of age.
That’s what I gleaned from playing an advance copy of the game’s demo, which has just been released on Steam. My own connection to the series is tangential — I came to it through Capybara’s fantastic 2009 puzzle RPG Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, which riffed on the series’ signature unit-stacking mechanic by turning it into a kind of tactical match-three game. Now, having gone to the source (or a modern simulacrum of it), I finally understand how true to the Might and Magic spirit that game was.
Olden Era is a stately, turn-based strategy game in the series’ tradition. You spend move points to send heroes scouting across a fog-of-war shrouded map, picking up gold, capturing cities and ore mines, and stumbling upon foes. Battles take place on a zoomed-in tactical hex grid, with units jostling for advantageous position and turns in the queue. You level up, equip items, choose new skills, recruit heroes and units, and build and upgrade your home city to earn boons and new recruits.
It’s all rendered in a flawlessly generic high-fantasy art style: fanciful, gold-rimmed and lushly colorful, with toylike knight figures scampering across the maps. The interface is crisp and simple, and the game feels robust and dependable, like a favorite cardigan. I am no expert; I have just fiddled with the tutorial and campaign levels, and haven’t tried multiplayer or the new draft-style arena mode. But Unfrozen looks to be doing a good job ahead of the game’s early access release, which will come to Steam in 2026.
Olden Era will doubtless work up to a serious challenge. But to be honest, it’s not a profoundly complex or challenging tactics game of the order of something like Tactics Ogre. It’s what I think of as a pipe-and-slippers game: a gentle, leatherbound hobby one should retire to one’s study to play, stroking one’s chin while clicking on things, making numbers go up, and judiciously — but not too judiciously, there’s no need to be dramatic — considering the next move. How lovely. Hooded Horse and Unfrozen are nailing that vibe, and fair play to Ubisoft for letting them. Now let me take a sip of my cocoa while I decide how to deploy my griffins.