Aurum: City of Chains announced as choice-driven RPG
Aurum: City of Chains promises a reactive city, remembered choices and multiple ways to live — but its release date remains unannounced.
Aurum: City of Chains is a new narrative-focused RPG set in a city that keeps changing without waiting for the player. Meridian has announced the game alongside a live Steam store page, although no release date has been announced.12
The premise puts the player in Aurum with nothing to their name. There is no fixed route to follow and no chosen-one role to fulfil: the game lets players decide whether to build wealth, gain influence, seek status or simply survive from day to day. That freedom is the central hook behind the announcement.1
A city that moves without you
Aurum is designed to continue developing independently of the player's actions. Events in the city can change prices, create new opportunities and introduce fresh problems, while non-player characters remember what the player has done and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Those responses can alter relationships, reputation and the choices available later in the story.1
The result sounds closer to a reactive social simulation wrapped around an RPG than a conventional adventure with a fixed sequence of missions. The important distinction is that the city is not simply a backdrop: its changing conditions are intended to create consequences even when the player is pursuing a quieter or less heroic life.1
The Steam listing identifies Aurum: City of Chains as a PC RPG, but it does not currently give the game a launch date. The store page also confirms that Japanese is not supported, so prospective players will need to account for that language limitation before following the project.12
What we know about the launch
Meridian has announced the game and opened its Steam presence, but the available announcement does not yet establish when it will release. That makes this an introduction to the premise rather than a launch announcement: the store page is live, while the game itself is still waiting for a confirmed date.12
Our opinion
The strongest part of Aurum: City of Chains is the promise that its systems will remember the player rather than merely react with a handful of pre-written dialogue branches. A city that changes its economy, opportunities and relationships independently could make ordinary choices feel more meaningful than a dramatic quest marker ever does. The caveat is that this kind of RPG lives or dies by the depth of its consequences: if reputation and NPC memory only change surface-level conversations, the concept will feel thinner than the announcement suggests. For now, though, Aurum has a clear identity and a more interesting question than “which ending will you get?” — it asks what kind of life you will build when the world keeps moving without you.12