The gate of Vesterra at night, torches burning on either side

The King's Surveyor

A retro first-person exploration adventure, made by a solo developer.

Wishlist on Steam Watch the teaser

Coming soon to PC. No release date yet.

You are the King's Surveyor, flung far from home by an ancient evil. Map a forgotten valley, study what its makers left behind, spend your torchlight wisely, and fight to survive on the long road home.

Far From Home

The King's Surveyor is a first-person exploration adventure in the old-school tradition. A simple man, lost in a world far older and stranger than he is, must find his way home. Embark on adventure. Embrace wanderlust. Endure the journey.

Sebastian is the King's Surveyor. Not a soldier, not a mage, just a careful man with a torch and a good eye, who has never once failed to come back from the unknown. He does the work because he is good at it, because it keeps his family fed, and because he does not stop.

The Aurelith crown sends him south to chart Vesterra, an ancient valley at the edge of the realm. Something very old reaches out of the darkness, corrupting the surveyor's path, and he wakes beyond the edge of every map he has ever drawn. Whatever it is, it does not want him to get home. He must return home.

Looking out over a sunlit glade from a high overlook

A Land That Remembers

Vesterra has been empty for a very long time. Whatever happened here left ruins in the mountains, halls no one has walked in centuries, and dead that still remember what they were. Sebastian carries a sword, though fighting is done out of necessity not enjoyment.

A skeleton warrior lit by firelight in a ruined hall

The Light

Magic here is not something you cast. It is an old, quiet relationship with the Light, the tether to the undercurrent of the world. Sebastian carries a torch. It is how he sees, and what the dark keeps its distance from, and it does not last. Out here, some things wake to light and react. Not all of them kindly.

A torch held up before an ancient stone gate

Chart Your Way Home

There is no experience bar and no skill tree. Sebastian gets better the way a surveyor does: by looking. Climb, leap and slide across a land that was never meant to be crossed. Knock on old stone and find the passages behind it. Study what you find in a field journal drawn in his own hand, and watch the map fill in beneath your boots.

The surveyor's hand-drawn map filling in
An avenue of tall trees leading toward a distant tower A hall under blossoming cherry trees A waterfall seen from the valley floor A narrow trench cut through stone A goblin warren lit by torchlight A page of the surveyor's field journal

Made By Hand

Built in an engine written from scratch for this game, with a CRT display simulation at its heart. An homage to the games that first made a dungeon feel like a place you were really standing in.

Analog Dream Dev is Alex Rybak, a solo developer in the United States. Work on the engine and the game began on 31 October 2025, after playing retro games on a CRT and wanting to bring back the feeling those games gave him as a kid. Both the engine, Retro Game Engine, and The King's Surveyor are written by hand.

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Press

Fact sheet, trailer in 1080p and 4K, logo, key art, screenshots and stills: press kit.

Contact: contactretroengine@gmail.com