Indie developer Diamond Dust now enters into high-fantasy territory with Dragontwin, an open-world RPG designed to fill a particularly niche gap left by these industry titans. While The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim opened up the world to the wonder of the Dovahkiin, the actual experience of dragon control often came to feel like a secondary mechanic rather than a core pillar of gameplay. Dragontwin intends to overturn that dynamic by placing power in the hands of players in the foot-long shoe of a beast for once delivering a level of aerial freedom rarely seen anywhere in the genre.
That would make for an obvious flight simulator, but it’s anticipated to evolve into a full single-player RPG experience, emphasizing customizability and progression. Players get to personalize the looks and abilities of their dragons, leveling up their creatures inside a sprawling, highly vertical world. The developers appear to be concentrating on the physical feel of weight and power so that the change between being a young hatchling to a mighty apex predator feels rightfully earned through exploration and combat.
The timing of this announcement is interesting in that it comes at a time of change in the fantasy RPG landscape. Big franchises usually take around ten years between releases, leaving an opening for small, nimble developers to wrestle with niche ideas in painstaking detail. Dragontwin thus hopes to capitalize on that “gap in the market,” with its design-heavy focus on the physics of flying and causing chaos as a gigantic fire-breathing entity, tapping into that “power fantasy” that many mods for earlier games tried to introduce-but were never really able to embed into those old, aging game engines.
The challenge ahead for Diamond Dust now, as development furthers, is a balanced synchrony between the immensely large expanse of its open world and that discrepancy created by the advantage of speed accelerated through its flying protagonist. Still, for players who found the dragon-riding gameplay mechanics in older titles to be somewhat heavy-handed or clunky, Dragontwin probably now marks a point to expect a more dedicated and granular approach toward creature-led RPG design one would assume a rather bold hit by an indie team, nevertheless aiming right at a very specific and a rather ravenous segment of this gaming populace.
