New free-to-play MMORPG tops Steam charts with a decade of solo development behind it

Soul's Remnant launched into Steam early access on 13 August. As of writing, the free 2D platformer MMORPG is drawing around an impressive 2,077 concurrent players with a "Mostly Positive" rating aggregate across its first ~70 reviews.

Developer Chaomoon started the project in April 2016 and built it alone for eight years. They ran annual public playtests to make sure the interest in the game stays up and about. A second developer, Rajah, joined in 2025. That is the whole studio.

The developers seemingly outdid themselves. The early access build comes with 72+ skills across melee, ranged, magic and faith lines with no classes to lock players in, over 1,000 items, 700+ crafting recipes, 19 bosses, three dungeons, 200+ maps and 150+ quests. The economy is entirely player-run via an auction house and player shop stalls, and Chaomoon composed all 40+ soundtrack pieces themselves. A real day/night cycle darkens most maps for roughly 22 real-world minutes at a stretch. This makes light sources a practical concern for Soul's Remnant.

For anyone on modest hardware, they will be glad to know that the requirements include Windows 7 or later, 2 GB of RAM, and a 400 MB install size. The GameMaker-built client also has macOS and Linux builds, though Steam does flag a macOS 10.15 Catalina incompatibility. Full controller support is already in, but verified Steam Deck support is a 1.0 roadmap item rather than a shipped feature. To be fair, that is understandable for a team of 2.

Chaomoon estimates six to twelve months in early access. Also, the pricing plan is supposed to stay the same throughout — free-to-play funded by optional cosmetic and convenience purchases. Character wipes have now stopped permanently, which effectively ends a decade of seasonal resets.

The launch was originally set for 5 August, but moved a week to avoid Nexon's second MapleStory Classic World closed test, which ran from 4 to 12 August. Given how openly Soul's Remnant wears its MapleStory influence, that looks like the correct call.