Build Your Own Retro RPG Worlds
Craft adventures and build your own retro RPG — with powerful world building tools and visual scripting
Eldiron is in active development. I work on it regularly—often weekly, sometimes almost daily. It’s a big project and very much a hobby and passion project at the moment.
Because of that, I can’t give fixed dates for when you’ll be able to ship a finished game. I want to keep development sustainable and enjoyable, and not turn it into a source of stress. That said, things are moving forward steadily, and with high probability Eldiron will reach v1 sometime in 2026.
Thank you to everyone who supports the project and follows along on this journey.
Now with the release of Eldiron v0.89 the current documentation is very much out of date. I will update the documentation and create new videos in the next days and weeks.
📰 Latest News
Dec 29, 2025 - My end of year development update and plans for the start of 2026. → Read the end of year blog
Dec 10, 2025 → New video now live
Dec 6, 2025 – Eldiron v0.8.90 released! New UI System, New GPU Rendering with Raytracing, Integrated Tile Editor and more!
[UPDATE] 0.8.91 with a fix for correct support of Windows Monitor Scales > 100%.
General Features
- Design 2D maps in a Doom-style editor using vertices, linedefs, and sectors to create textured polygons.
- Quickly paint with tiles using the Rect tool, which automatically generates the necessary geometry as you work.
- Import your tilesets, define animations and metadata, and expand your tile collection. You can easily set tile properties—such as whether a tile is blocking—at any time. Visit our Patreon Shop for a growing collection of tilesets; your support helps the project thrive.
- Access all commands in Eldiron Creator through the Action list. Available actions update automatically based on your geometry selection or UI state, ensuring you always know which commands are ready to use.
- Define character and item behaviors with an intuitive visual node editor or the inbuilt custom scripting language called Eldrin.
- Eldiron Creator is cross-platform, available for Windows, Linux, and macOS in the download section of the GitHub repo. Each release includes builds for all platforms, including the Web. An Xcode project is also provided for specialized iOS, macOS, and iPadOS builds.
Eldiron Creator currently ships with localizations for Chinese (Mandarin), German, Russian, Spanish and Taiwanese.
Eldiron is free and open source under the MIT license — your support is greatly appreciated.
3D Features
- 3D editing is seamlessly integrated into the editor, allowing you to create new geometry or extrude and edit surface profiles non-destructively.
- Render your scenes in 3D using the new GPU-based raytracer, featuring ambient occlusion, shadows, transparency, PBR materials, and day/night time simulation.
- The Action system is fully integrated with the geometry workflow, displaying all available actions for your current selection.
- Edit and extrude surfaces non-destructively, including carving holes for windows, recesses, and reliefs.
- Choose from isometric, first-person, or orbit cameras for flexible editing views.
- Paint with tiles on 3D surfaces using the Rect tool.
With Eldiron you can create great looking 3D geometry without any prior 3D modelling experience.
(Visual) Scripting
- Create behavior visually with a node-based event system using simple drag and drop. The node system generates Eldrin code.
- React to world events (like a character entering a sector or a conversation starting) by breaking complex logic into small, manageable tasks.
- Choose from a wide range of built-in events and commands.
- See realtime feedback if commands succeeded or failed.
- You can also program directly in the inbuilt, custom scripting language Eldrin.
Tiles, Tiles and more Tiles
- Pixel art tiles are the foundation of all your projects, in both 2D and 3D. Import them from your tilesets or create and edit them in the integrated tile editor.
- Draw with tiles using the Rect tool—even in 3D, you can paint directly on surfaces.
- Tiles in 3D are rendered with PBR materials (Roughness, Metallic, Opacity, Emissive). Material attributes can currently be set with the Set Tile Materials action; soon you'll be able to paint directly with materials inside the tile editor.
- Focusing on tiles makes Eldiron both easy-to-use and powerful, recreating the look of those beloved games from the late 80s and 90s.
- Soon the tile editor will support procedural tile creation for fireballs, explosions, bricks, and more.
World building
World building is the core focus of Eldiron. The editor is designed around the idea that a world is more than geometry or visuals — it is a structured space with rules, relationships, and long-term evolution.
- Create worlds using explicit structure: vertices, linedefs, sectors, surfaces, and profiles define space in a way that is deterministic and inspectable.
- Combine 2D and 3D workflows seamlessly — author top-down maps, then extend them vertically into fully explorable 3D environments without switching tools.
- Define world logic alongside geometry: events, behaviors, and scripted interactions are attached directly to places and entities in the world.
- Worlds remain editable at every stage. Geometry, tiles, materials, and logic can be refined iteratively without destructive baking steps.
- Eldiron worlds are designed to be system-driven, making them suitable not only for games, but also for simulations, experiments, and rule-based environments.
Eldiron aims to make worlds understandable, adaptable, and sustainable — so they can grow over time instead of being rebuilt from scratch.
Thanks to Our Supporters
A heartfelt thank you to everyone supporting Eldiron via Patreon and GitHub Sponsors. Your support helps me keep building and improving this project.
