Sunken Realms

The store puts it in one line: Sunken Realms is a focused, ARPG dungeon crawler with rogue-lite elements, about a son searching for answers. The long description gives the premise - Alric's father descended into the ruins beneath the city years ago and never came back, and Alric goes looking for answers - and the loop: descend into an abandoned underground city, battle monsters, collect materials, craft your gear and master forgotten spells, then return to camp to craft weapons, cook food, brew potions, trade and upgrade your character, with a story that unfolds between two friends around the campfire between runs. The store also states the boundaries plainly: No open world. No battle pass. Just a sword, a dungeon, and a question that won't let you go.

The room structure is the part that makes the game different. The store lists it as a feature: hand-crafted rooms are procedurally re-arranged every time you enter the dungeon so you'll never play the same layout twice. The developer put a number on it in the release-date post: each of the six sections needed a total of 17 different rooms, plus a few extras, which made a grand total of 109 rooms, and he got probably 40 of them done in 30 days.

It is a one-person shop in practice. The official posts are written in the first person singular - I conducted a poll on my Discord, I pushed 3 patches this week, contact me on my Discord so I can walk you through how to keep both - and the score is credited to Matt Warren. The origin story is also in the official record: a demo was released in 2022, then the developer was hired full-time on another game and Sunken Realms went on the backburner for four years, before a new demo in May 2026 and a Steam Next Fest appearance brought it back.

The current Steam US-English page displays September 19, 2026 and a $16.99 buy box. The developer’s earlier announcement planned September 18. This records the two readings without treating a plan or store field as an exact worldwide unlock time.

What the store does not say is as much a part of the record as what it does. The published configuration has a single line, Minimum: OS *: Windows 7, and there is no recommended configuration at all. The asterisk on that line points at a Steam notice printed under it: Starting January 1st, 2024, the Steam Client will only support Windows 10 and later versions. So the published floor of Windows 7 is a leftover: the client underneath it has needed Windows 10 since 2024, and the store has not updated the line. The supported-language list is English only. There are no Steam achievements on this title, and no demo product is listed on the store page today, even though the game had one - the developer released a demo in 2022 and a new one in May 2026. What the store carries instead is a separate product: the DLC entry on this app points at appid 4826410, Sunken Realms Playtest, released 16 June 2026 and listed at the same $16.99 as the full game. The demo field itself is empty, so the playtest product is the only trace of the pre-release build left on the store. The listed features are Single-player, Full controller support, Steam Cloud and Family Sharing.

That thin published spec has to be read next to the patch history below, because the store page itself never told a buyer what the game would demand of their machine, and the developer was shipping performance work through October.

The official feed now includes v1.13, posted at 16:33:56 UTC on 22 October (23 October in Asia/Shanghai). It moves the game from Unreal Engine 5.7 to 5.8. The developer suggests there may be minor performance improvements but explicitly says they have not measured them. Do not turn that expectation into a frame-rate promise. Earlier versioned fixes remain historical evidence, not proof of every player’s current results.

Open Settings > General to choose the consequences of dying. The v1.09 note and the later Week 3 explanation distinguish three modes:

• Normal: retain equipped items, lose run loot and gold, and receive one essence for a completed section.
• Story: return to camp with what you carried and receive two essences.
• Hardcore: lose carried and equipped items and receive no essence.

The named patch texts use slightly different wording for when an essence is awarded. This is a summary of those published rules, not an independently tested death or reward outcome. The notes do not support the earlier claim that this option arrived in the first week.

The release trailer is unusually honest about the interface, because it stops and shows three menus over live footage of the camp. The first is labelled FORGE WEAPONS: a smithy window, Smithy Lv. 4, with a Craftable Items list on the left - Steel Ingot, Steel Arrow, Cobbled Sword & Shield, Steel Axe, Steel Spear, Steel Sword & Shield, Steel Daggers, Steel Bow - and on the right the selected recipe, Steel Daggers, described as a two-handed powerful sword that inflicts massive damage, heavy, slow and somewhat unpredictable, with Required Materials counting up to a Create button.

The second is CRAFT SUPPLIES, a Cooking Pot window with coins in the header and a Cookable Items list - Minor Health Potion, Health Potion, Grilled Meat, Hunter's Meat, Minor Mana Potion, Invokable Elixir - and a recipe panel for Hunter's Tavern. The third is UPGRADE STATS, a Stat Forge panel listing Constitution, Might, Focus, Vitality, Dexterity, Wisdom and Intelligence, plus Increase Health Points, each with a value bar and a Price and Upgrade button.

The week four post then explains the biggest change to the loot economy: randomised loot, delivered as amulets. They drop randomly in chests, with higher rates in safe rooms and treasure rooms, with better stats the deeper you go in the dungeon. There is a new slot in the inventory for your amulet, they drop with random stat buffs, and higher tiers, like the legendary amulet, can have more than one buff, up to four. The same post says the developer ran a poll on his Discord and that randomised loot and armour sets were the two clear winners.

The Week 2 post adds the quality-of-life side: two more item quick slots, improved combat feedback, and the stat-bar flash and audio cue for an action you cannot complete.

The performance complaints are old and the fixes are public, so the two should be read together.

The developer named the fix himself in the v1.08.2 patch of 3 October 2026: I found a bug related to the dungeon map that was very expensive, especially on lower end hardware. On my Steam Deck on low settings, this fix took my FPS from 12 to 50. That is the only first-party frame-rate number published for this game, and it is a number on a Steam Deck on low settings, not a general guarantee.

The launch-day thread asking whether the game is playable on Steam Deck was answered on 16 October with: Works on steam deck and should get a solid 30 fps. Just make sure it's updated. A thread reporting 30 FPS on a 3070 Ti at 1080p as unplayable drew a reply saying it should have gotten better optimized, with roughly the same specs running smoothly, and that one biome can cause a bit of a FPS drop for a second or two before it sorts itself out. A thread about the game locking the computer before it even loads was answered in the same batch of replies, which said the game should work better, feel smoother, not be as laggy or frame-droppy, and that the crashes have been more or less removed.

The one thing to keep straight: the store's published configuration is a single line, Minimum: OS *: Windows 7, with no recommended tier, so there is no official performance target to hold the game to. The version scope for this page is the patch number, because the v1.05 and v1.03 notes - remappable movement, faster dungeon loading, no crashes across twenty internal runs - are the actual answer to what changed.

Two threads in the game's own discussions carry answers from the developer's own account, and both are worth having in one place.

The first is the Necromancer, the last boss, where a player asked for the easiest way to kill him. The reply from the developer account MagicPuncher: You can only damage him once you kill all his minions. Easiest way to kill the minions is Hexploder if you have it. That is the mechanic stated by the publisher, including the item that answers it.

The second is a bug report titled My anvil is gone, where a player's anvil had disappeared after an upgrade, the upgrade price had become 0 and the station could be upgraded infinitely. A community member explained what was happening - sometimes if you interact too quick, the price is 0, and you can upgrade stations past MAX, and they should still work but just visually disappear - and then the developer replied: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have found a fix and it will be in the next update. The next update was v1.12 on 17 October, and its first line is Fixed crafting stations being able to be leveled above the max level and having missing models. The report and the fix are ten days and one patch apart, and the fix is on the public record.

A third thread, on a puzzle room with a stone door and no key, is still open: a player wrote that they had used the divination spell to look for objects and no key was there. A community member pointed out that the maps and rooms are procedurally generated, so they sometimes do not link together correctly, and pointed the player at the Discord bug report. No developer answer is on that thread, and this site does not claim one.

The store's Release Trailer, movie id 257428142, runs 97.47 seconds. This site read the whole cut frame by frame and publishes a 44-second excerpt of it, from 0:20 to 1:04, because the first twenty seconds are combat montage and the last thirty are the campfire and the end card. The audio was not reviewed.

What the excerpt carries, in order: the three camp interfaces already described - FORGE WEAPONS, CRAFT SUPPLIES, UPGRADE STATS - each shown over the camp itself with the forge, the cooking pot and the stat forge visible behind the panels; the SUNKEN PORTAL doorway, a blue-lit arch; the line GO DEEPER; the line FIND THE TRUTH over a red, fleshy corridor; then the protagonist Alric, a blond man shown in close portrait, intercut with more dungeon combat, a green flooded area where a figure picks up gold, and a fight against a large spined creature.

The trailer carries no build stamp, so none of it is tied to a specific version.

These are real questions players asked in the game's own Steam discussions, re-read against the threads on 22 October 2026. The thread link for each one is in this section's sources. Where the developer has published an answer it is named; where he has not, the question is left open rather than guessed at.

• "All buttons can be rebound EXCEPT WASD !!! NOT EVERYONE IS RIGHT HANDED!" — asked in the Steam thread No keybinding for directional keys?; intent: controls. Answered by the v1.05 patch of 24 Sep 2026: Movement (WASD) can now be remapped.
• "Having issues killing the last boss the necromancer what is the easiest way to kill him??" — asked in the Steam thread Necromancer; intent: boss help. Answered by the developer: You can only damage him once you kill all his minions. Easiest way to kill the minions is Hexploder if you have it.
• "My anvil disappeared after an upgrade. The upgrade price is also now 0 and I can seemingly upgrade it infinitely" — asked in the Steam thread My anvil is gone; intent: game bug. Answered by the developer: I have found a fix and it will be in the next update, and the next update was v1.12 on 17 Oct 2026.
• "This is my second time thru.... I got into the big room but there is only the stone door witch requires a key to exit. THERE IS NO KEY HERE !!!" — asked in the Steam thread problem with Festering place; intent: puzzle blocker. No developer answer on the thread; a community member explains that the rooms are procedurally generated and sometimes do not link together correctly.
• "I remapped the spell cast button to the forward side mouse button... I can't the spell (fireball), it only does a aiming thing, but no fireball" — asked in the Steam thread spells won't cast !!! Arrows don't damage !!!; intent: controls and combat. The developer explains that the fireball is held to aim and then released, and will not cast if you are too quick or too close because of friendly fire.
• "the game locks up my computer before it even loads and requires a hard start" — asked in the Steam thread Crashes before the game even loads...; intent: PC troubleshooting. No developer answer; a community reply on 16 Oct 2026 says the crashes have been more or less removed.
• "im getting 30FPS on my 3070Ti at 1080p. This is simply unplayable." — asked in the Steam thread The Game has soul, but the rendering optimization is abysmal; intent: PC performance. No developer answer; v1.08.2 is the performance patch.
• "Is that something in the works?" — asked in the Steam thread CO-OP; intent: player count and modes. No developer answer; the store lists the game as single-player.

No search-volume source could be read for any of these, so this list shows that the questions were really asked, not how many people search them.