Grand Emprise certainly looks the part. “Time travel through history to become god,” this absolutely ridiculous survival game boasts on its Steam store page. That’s quite the pitch, but seeing it in action it’s immediately clear how Grand Emprise has racked up over 140,000 wishlist additions on Steam. Blending the likes of Ark, Rust, and Sons of the Forest with the space adventuring of Astroneer and No Man’s Sky, the Grand Emprise release date is just around the corner.
A recent Grand Emprise trailer reveals how your journey heads into space, but if you haven’t seen the game in action before there’s a lot more going on. It kicks off with a man riding a dinosaur across tropical islands, and honestly it only gets wilder from there. There’s explorations into deep, dark caverns filled with incredible, towering stone ruins. There’s luxury riverside huts built on stilts. There’s a rowboat that soars across both rivers and – perplexingly – sand dunes with incredible speed.
The dangers on view are just as clear – from vicious crocs snapping at your ankles to towering, eldritch sand worms bursting forth from the ground, it seems you’ll be kept on your toes at every turn. There’s even elephants; somehow that shouldn’t be surprising after the dinosaurs and yet it still caught me off-guard.
The game’s solo developer doesn’t want to oversell you too much, however. They note that “each time period is intentionally short to keep the game constantly exciting, similar to games like It Takes Two and Spore.” It’s only a single-player game, and will take around 12-25 hours to complete.
It’s also built largely out of assets that come from the Unreal store; given the broad scope of the game and its single developer, that shouldn’t be too surprising, but it’s good to keep in mind going in. Nevertheless, it looks to have been combined into a really fun adventure – just watch the trailer below, because nothing I can say here will sell you as immediately on wanting to try it as that.
Grand Emprise release date Steam
Grand Emprise releases on Steam on Thursday July 27, 2023. You can wishlist it now, or check out the prologue adventure, which features the dinosaur and primitive eras, for free right now to see what you actually think of it before committing to the final game.
Alternatively, check out more of the best upcoming games for the rest of the year, or support more small creators with our picks of the best indie games on PC right now.