What do you get when you take the survival gameplay of ARK, mix it with the building of Minecraft, a constant PvP arena fight, and theme it around medieval times? You get Renown, a game by Australian developers RDBK Studios, that makes one of the more interesting indie games that I got a chance to play recently.
Name: Renown
Platform(s): PC
Developer: RDBK Studios
Publisher: RDBK Studios
Game Type: Online PvP, Action, Adventure, Survival
Mode(s): Online
Release Date: Q3 2025
Steam Wishlist Link: Renown
I’ll be honest, I’m not one for survival games, especially those that degrade over time when you don’t log in, but when you load up into the world of Renown, you quickly understand how it makes sense.
During our invited playtest time with Renown, we were shown a lot of what is going into the base of the game. Starting things out is the crafting system, which feels a little bit like the Minecraft crafting table, where you take materials you find around the area and make them into something useful. The big difference here is that everything has a somewhat realistic time frame attached to it. Want to make a full suit of armor? Then you better be prepared to wait for it to be smelted, forged, and created. The same thing goes for some of the larger buildings.
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait for anything during our playtest, as the developers loaded us up with all the top-level gear right away so we could experience what Renown is all about… The Player vs Player aspects.
Renown’s PvP is some of the most interesting and fun that you can have in this game. While you might be walking around in an equivalent of a small tank in metal, you can bypass it pretty easily. Slashes to the leg area will bypass armor value and even cripple opponents if hit correctly.
During our battle session, which was set up as attackers vs defenders in a siege-style area, we saw the use of archers taking down people all over the place from a distance while others rushed in to get some kills by either slicing or smashing their way into the castle that was set up for this demo. As an attacker, I used both an archer’s bow, a broadsword, and a heavy hammer to help my side get through the defenders as quickly as possible. The big thing I noticed with the bow and arrows is that there is a drop over distance, forcing me to adjust the level of aim needed to do damage, something I’m used to with Fortnite and their sniper rifles. This skill came in handy, allowing me to hit opponents from a long distance without compromising cover for myself. But when things got tight inside the castle, I was able to switch to a broadsword to get in the face of the defenders, which worked till we get locked into the opposition spawn point and got slaughtered… So don’t get too aggressive or you will end up being the one who is killed. Luckily, the respawn is a bed inside your own castle or hut.
Building is the other thing that is big in Renown. Building your own home and expanding out is paramount to getting around in the game, and is something that groups can do to make villages and other locations. We were shown a few different styles of buildings during our playtime, ranging from a standard one-room wooden hut, all the way up to a massive stone castle that could contain a whole village inside it safely. The fact that this is something that people on other servers banded together to do themselves is pretty inspiring… Though my own attempt at making something livable showed me that I need to spend more time in The Sims relearning house design. I ended up making a two-room stone building that is probably rubble by now.
One of the big things with Renown is that all buildings need to be maintained over time, meaning that you cannot just make something and disappear for a month and expect it to still be standing when you return. Renown makes this happen so that the world does not become covered in a million buildings over time, taking up server space and slowing down the gameplay experience. While this might not feel right for a lot of people, we were told that the degradation of the buildings is slow enough that you’re not going to lose all your progress within a week… I think the reset cycle is around 3-4 weeks, which gives you time to jump back in and do things inside the world, which is the point.
While the version of Renown that we got to play was an Alpha-level build, there was a lot to do and even more to explore. When the game goes live, somewhere around the third quarter of the year, the early-access game will have so many events and modes attached to it that you’re going to be wanting to play for a long time to come… Which is not bad for a couple of Australian developers who decided to start making a video game during the pandemic.
You can wishlist Renown via the Steam link here. The game will be in Early Access during the third quarter (July to September) of 2025.
