Runecraft Studios, the one-person studio of German developer Gökhan Cirag, announced NOSTRA: Crystalbound, a standalone action roguelite planned for PC on Steam in Q1 2027.
Crystalbound is set in the world of NOSTRA, the dark fantasy RPG that Cirag is still building. That gives readers another way into the world before NOSTRA’s November 2027 release. Cirag revealed the new game in late “State of NOSTRA”, a 19-minute developer video about NOSTRA’s biggest update so far. The announcement trailer above runs under two minutes.
The roguelite takes place in the year 860 of the Charter, long after the events of NOSTRA. In the old wars, the kingdoms of Nostra burned crystal as if supply would never end. Then portals appeared, and now crystal grows everywhere, lighting lamps and firing forges. No kingdom guards the roads anymore. Merchants pay any blade that will clear them, and carters drag the fallen back “for a fee”.
Runecraft hasn’t announced a price for Crystalbound, and its Steam page isn’t open yet. The studio says only that the page “opens soon”, and it hasn’t said whether the game will get a demo.
Both games share NeoEngine, a set of around 140 in-house plugins that carry the rendering, combat, tools, and systems on top of RPG Maker MZ.
Crystalbound grew out of the NeoEngine. Everything I build for NOSTRA, the light, the weather, the tools, made a second game in the same world possible, and it is already far along.
Gökhan Cirag, founder of Runecraft Studios
NOSTRA’s DEV 0.30 update adds a new render pipeline with high dynamic range and depth of field, shadows from a height map, and rain in three depth layers. Combat now has stages with their own light and weather, plus a reworked parry. New systems include homestead building, the conquest mode Conquer, and the card game Brask.
Since 25 September 2026, NOSTRA’s alpha demo has been available on Steam, where the game can also be wishlisted.
Cirag aims to have NOSTRA feature-ready by the end of 2026, about eleven months before its planned November 2027 release.
