Eternal Strands, the new game from Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw's Yellow Brick Games, is set to launch on January 28—and today Laidlaw announced that a week before that happens, a playable demo will be released to give curious gamers a taste of what it's all about.
"It's January, so I’m pleased we can say we're going to release a playable demo of Eternal Strands on Jan. 21st on Steam," Laidlaw wrote on Bluesky. "Lots of folks have been asking about one, and it's a game that benefits from 'feeling' it, I think."
That's probably valid. Eternal Strands has leaned heavily into its physics-based interactions so far—"The world is your weapon" and all that—but what it's actually about is harder to pin down. Even the description of the game world on Steam focuses more on how you'll be doing things than why: "Explore the wilds, the capital city of Dynevron, and the secrets beneath as every surface is climbable. Magical abilities can create bridges, burn barriers, or launch Brynn across the world. The next-generation physics system encourages and rewards player creativity in exploration as much as combat. As the Enclave's secrets unfold, return to base camp to consult with a rich cast of characters."
Despite that relative dearth of narrative grounding, Eternal Strands has some of the PC Gamer crew excited based solely on the potential to cause chaos: Associate editor Ted Litchfield wrote in June 2024 that "if Eternal Strands can deliver on that promise of physics-powered spellcasting, I'll be all-in on it," while staff writer Harvey Randall said that even if the story falls flat, "I'll still have a blast seeing exactly how I can style on some dragons."
Laidlaw didn't say how much of the game the Eternal Strands demo will contain, but he did admit to being "nervous, excited, and intrigued" about its forthcoming release. "It’s been such a sharp context shift for me," he wrote. "60 people instead of hundreds, indie budget instead of AAA, and so on. My two big hopes: people have fun, and I can keep working with this team. YBG crew has been professionally rejuvenating."
Hopefully so, but it's been hit-or-miss for BioWare veterans striking out to do their own thing. Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider found success with the "musical RPG" Stray Gods, and James Ohlen's Archetype Entertainment is still working away on Exodus. But former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson closed Humanoid Origin in November 2024 without releasing the "multi-platform AAA game" it was working on, and a couple days later former Mass Effect creative director Mac Walters did the same at Worlds Untold, just a year after it was announced.
