Put down your holy hand grenades and pick up your keyboards—Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, which draws heavily from the story of King Arthur, has officially crossed 450,000 copies sold across Steam and consoles! Not bad for a scrappy indie RPG that’s been lovingly referred to as “indie Skyrim” by players with a soft spot for brooding knights, mysterious curses, and morally questionable quests (so, Skyrim fans).
The developers at Awaken Realms Digital are clearly feeling the love and, in a recent community update, gave players a heartfelt “big, fat THANK YOU.” In a tone more humble than a medieval peasant offered a shrubbery, they credited the game’s passionate fanbase for helping it grow—and promised they’re not done yet.
If you haven’t dived in yet, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a first-person open-world RPG steeped in a dark reimagining of Arthurian legend. You’ll find crumbling ruins, morally complex factions, and plenty of eerie fog—basically, it’s what you’d get if Skyrim and Monty Python and the Holy Grail had a lovechild… raised in a haunted forest. I say Monty Python because despite the grim-dark graphics and the fantastic Polish folksy soundtrack (think Witcher 3), the game also has a weird sense of humour. So far I’ve run into an undead chef who tried to convince me sour fish and cheese are a delicacy, and then a few minutes later, I’m weighing up the ethics of two warring factions.
In other words, yes, I’m playing the game and plan on reviewing it.
And if you’ve already bought it? Congrats on helping 450,000 other would-be Grail seekers bring balance to a cursed land. Just remember: strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What’s Next on the Road(map) to Avalon?
Selling nearly half a million copies is no small feat, but Awaken Realms isn’t just counting coins in Camelot. Here’s what’s on the horizon:
- Patch 1.03 is rolling out now, with plenty of bug squashing and performance improvements.
- Weekly patches are planned going forward (though the devs cheekily admit it might be more “ish” than “weekly”).
- Mod support is coming in about 3–4 weeks—cue the inevitable “killer rabbit” overhaul mod.
- Steam Deck performance build is in the works (exact date TBD).
- Patch 1.1, due in August, will add new content—especially in Act 3’s Forlorn Swords region. The devs are keeping it hush-hush, but it’s safe to expect something exciting (hopefully not another grail-shaped beacon).
The devs also put out a chunky 1.3 patch for the game, while addressing the topic of performance and bugs. If you want to read the full and very lengthy list of fixes and tweaks, check it out here.
“When we set out to make Tainted Grail, we wanted to create a deep, complex adventure, both in terms of storytelling and exploration. But we also wanted to give you, the player, as much freedom as possible,” says the developers on Steam. “That’s why you can kill many NPCs, experience wildly different quest outcomes, and approach things in any order. We wanted to minimize hand-holding, just like we’d expect as players.”
They go on to say that the cost of this is that the game has so many combinations of things that can happen that glitches can easily sneak in. They even provide a pre-release example, explaining that they discovered an issue where selling a weapon that had been upgraded with a relic could cause a problem hours later when the vendor’s inventory reset.