Alabaster Dawn

Seven chapters are planned, and the current build delivers about one and a half. That gap shapes every judgement about Alabaster Dawn, the new top-down 2.5D action RPG from Radical Fish Games, the studio behind CrossCode. The game entered Steam Early Access on May 7, 2026, at $24.99.

The premise is an apocalypse of absence. Nyx’s shadow fell across the world, and the gods and humanity vanished with it. Juno, the Outcast Chosen, has to reawaken people and break the curse. That is a smart setup for an action RPG because it gives progress a physical form. Every revived community and rebuilt settlement shows the campaign moving forward in a way a quest log never could.

Radical Fish has packed a lot into the frame. Combat is fast and built on combos, with eight weapons spread across four elements that can be swapped mid-fight. Each weapon has its own skill tree of Combat Arts, and Divine Arts add a layer of powerful spells on top. Around the fighting sits a full RPG kit: gem and enchantment socketing, crafting through Artificer NPCs, cooking for healing bulbs and temporary buffs, puzzles, parkour-style traversal, treasure hunting and resource gathering. That is a long list of systems for a build that runs roughly 6 to 10 hours, up to the middle of Chapter 2, plus an optional rogue-lite side story. The finished game targets seven chapters and around 40 hours, so today’s slice is roughly 15 to 25 percent of the planned runtime.

Reception has been strong. On Steam the game holds an Overwhelmingly Positive rating, with about 96% of roughly 1,400 English reviews positive. Recent reviews sit at Very Positive, around 91%. Most of the complaints concern how much game exists, not how well it plays.

The positioning is clear. This is an ambitious, systems-heavy pixel-art action RPG, sold early to an audience that already trusts the studio’s name. The question for buyers is whether to spend that trust now or a few chapters from now.

• Elemental weapon matrix: Four elements and eight weapons, with two weapons slotted per element and switching allowed mid-fight. Choosing a loadout becomes a combat decision, not a menu decision.
• Combat Arts and Divine Arts: Every weapon has its own Combat Arts skill tree, and Divine Arts add powerful spells on top.
• Layered exploration: Puzzles, parkour-style traversal, treasure hunting and resource gathering all happen in the same spaces.
• World map with reminders: Players can mark points of interest and fast travel between locations.
• Gear, crafting and cooking: Gems and enchantments socket into equipment, Artificer NPCs handle crafting, and cooking produces healing bulbs and temporary buffs.
• Settlement rebuilding: Restoring ruined settlements changes how they look and opens new paths and progression.
• Rogue-lite side story: An optional mode, separate from the main campaign, included in the Early Access build.

Combat: A Matrix, Not a Moveset

The weapon structure is the smartest decision in the design. Four elements with two weapons each makes eight in total. Because the two weapons for an element are slotted together, picking an element and picking a weapon are separate choices. Mid-fight switching turns that grid into a combo vocabulary. The design invites players to start a string on one weapon and continue it on another, and a player who learns those transitions gets more from each encounter than one who sticks with a favorite. Steam reviewers single out the fast combo combat and mid-fight switching as highlights, which is the best available sign that the central loop works.

The matrix has a dependency, though. Eight weapons and four elements only justify themselves if enemies punish players for ignoring them. If one comfortable weapon can clear the whole roster, the grid becomes optional flavor. That makes the most telling criticism from Steam reviewers the request for more varied enemies. In a game built on switching, enemy variety is what gives the switching a purpose.

Progression: Many Trees, One Economy

A Combat Arts tree for each weapon gives all eight weapons a distinct identity, and Divine Arts add a spell layer above them. Gems and enchantments go into gear, Artificer NPCs handle crafting, and cooking supplies healing bulbs and timed buffs. Each system makes sense on its own.

The concern is the economy that feeds them. Eight separate skill trees in a 6–10 hour slice means one of two things. Either skill points come in generously, or players commit to a few weapons and never explore the rest. The second outcome would quietly undercut the weapon matrix the combat depends on. The full 40-hour game has the runtime to make every tree worth investing in. The Early Access build has far less room.

Cooking earns credit for tying resource gathering back into combat. Healing bulbs and temporary buffs give gathering a purpose beyond the crafting menu, and they let players prepare for a hard fight instead of only reacting to it.

Exploration and Puzzles

Puzzles, parkour-style traversal, treasure hunting and gathering share the same spaces, and the 2.5D presentation is what makes the traversal workable. Top-down views have always had trouble showing height, and any jumping section depends on a ledge clearly reading as reachable. Building the world with depth gives the art a functional job as well as a decorative one.

Steam reviewers like the mix but ask for harder puzzles, which usually means the opening act is tuned for onboarding. A gentle curve is defensible across the first chapter and a half. It would not be across seven chapters. The full release needs a difficulty ramp that the current slice can only hint at.

The world map’s reminders are a small feature with outsized value. Exploration-heavy action RPGs regularly show players a chest they cannot reach yet or a path they cannot open. Marking those spots turns backtracking from guesswork into a plan, and with fast travel alongside, the map shows a studio that respects the player’s time.

Settlements: Progress You Can See

Rebuilding ruined settlements changes their appearance and opens new paths and progression. This is where Alabaster Dawn’s systems and story connect most cleanly. The premise asks Juno to reawaken a vanished humanity, and the settlement layer makes that literal: rebuilt places look different and offer more. Progress shows up as geography, not as numbers.

This is also where the build’s thinness is most likely to show. Settlements are the natural home for side quests, and Steam reviewers want more of them. A rebuilt town with nobody asking anything of the player risks becoming a pretty unlock screen.

The Early Access Question

It is too early to judge the story. A plot planned across seven chapters cannot show its shape by the middle of Chapter 2, and requests for a deeper story may say as much about where the build stops as about the writing. We don’t mark the narrative down for being unfinished, but buyers today get setup without payoff.

The optional rogue-lite side story is the build’s smartest scope decision. A combat system this layered suits a structure where repeated runs reward mastery. It also gives early buyers a place to keep using the weapon matrix after the campaign slice ends. It cannot replace the missing chapters, but it stretches the value of what is there.

Localization is a narrower but concrete limit. Text currently covers English and Simplified Chinese, and Steam reviewers are asking for more languages.

Pixel art and animation are the features Steam reviewers praise most often, and many call them a clear step up from CrossCode. In a combo-driven action game, that matters for more than looks. Animation carries information: wind-ups, hit frames and recovery windows have to read instantly when weapons and elements change mid-string. Putting the art budget into motion is the right priority for this genre.

The 2.5D treatment also does structural work, giving parkour traversal the depth cues a flat top-down view lacks. The weak spot is variety. Steam reviewers ask for more varied environments, which suggests the current slice relies on a limited set of locations.

The UI has a hard problem built into the design. The HUD has to show the active element, the slotted weapons, Combat Arts, Divine Arts and any active buffs without burying the pixel art under icons. The full release will have to keep solving that as more Arts unlock.

A 2.5D pixel-art game of this scope should be light on hardware, and SteamOS support points to handheld PCs as a realistic target. As an Early Access product, its technical state will change from update to update.

Alabaster Dawn is a Steam release with support for Windows and SteamOS/Linux. There is no macOS or console version listed, so Mac players are left out for now.

SteamOS support is the most meaningful detail here. It makes the game a natural fit for Steam Deck-class handhelds, where a top-down pixel-art action RPG suits both the screen size and shorter play sessions.

The design points toward a gamepad. Fast combos, mid-fight weapon swaps and a separate spell layer map neatly onto face and shoulder buttons. Players who prefer keyboard and mouse should check the store page’s input details before buying.

Language support is the other limitation: English and Simplified Chinese only at this stage. As with any Early Access game, content, balance and features will change between updates, and buying now means buying into that process.

Radical Fish has built a sound foundation. The weapon matrix gives combat a real vocabulary, and the settlement layer turns the premise into progress players can see. The map’s reminders and fast travel respect players’ time, and Steam reviewers broadly agree the pixel art is a clear step up from CrossCode. The 96% positive rating reflects all of that.

What exists is still a slice. It offers six to ten hours of a planned forty, a story that stops mid-chapter, and enemy and environment variety that reviewers already find thin. The puzzles have yet to show a real difficulty curve. The design’s biggest bet, eight weapons across four elements, needs the full game’s length and enemy roster to pay off, and the Early Access build cannot prove that it will.

We recommend Alabaster Dawn now for CrossCode followers and combat-system enthusiasts who enjoy watching a game grow and will use the rogue-lite side story as a sandbox. Everyone else, especially players who want a complete narrative, gets the better deal by waiting for more chapters. The fundamentals are solid, the combat is worth the price of entry for the right player, and the rest is a matter of patience.