Dark Era: Development

BLANKACT

STATUS: In development

TARGET PLATFORM: Windows

Start with a weathered dock, a small ship, and room to grow. Govern your island, assign your heroes, and take the helm as your harbor reaches toward an uncharted sea.

The current design puts your attention on the decisions that connect a harbor to its voyages: who to send, where to land, what to bring home, and when to return. Heroes carry out their assigned work while you direct the ship and the larger plan.

Release date, public testing, pricing, and store links have not been announced. English titles are working translations.

https://blankact.com/games/dark-era-development/

UPDATED: 2026-11-10

Build a foothold at the edge of the known sea.
A weathered dock, a small vessel, and an island shaped by the land itself: this is where your domain begins. Beyond the shoreline, fog conceals the places that might sustain it—or put it at risk.

The setting centers on rebuilding and reaching outward. Your harbor is a place to organize people, turn raw materials into useful goods, and prepare voyages. The sea connects those ambitions to uncertain encounters. Growth comes from deciding what to develop at home and what is worth sending a crew to find.

Home islands are designed with equal overall area but different terrain: plains, low ground, lakes, and impassable mountains. A familiar building plan will not suit every coastline. Exploration gradually reveals a randomly formed sea, making reconnaissance and return routes part of the same decision.

Plan the harbor.
Choose where to build, which materials to process, and who stays to work or defend. Prepare provisions and a crew for the next voyage. Expanding production should serve a purpose: a repair, an order, or the supplies that let you travel farther.

Take the helm.
Steer the ship, uncover the sea, and choose a landing point. The current crew design allows up to six heroes aboard and requires a captain. Every place has an opportunity cost: stopping to gather may delay another task or leave less support at home.

Deploy, support, recover.
Assign heroes to gathering, work, defense, or exploration. They navigate, fight, and use abilities autonomously according to their tasks. You decide where help is needed and when to withdraw; the ship provides transport and the means to bring the party home.

Turn the return into progress.
Bring resources back, process them, and deliver port contracts for coins and prosperity. Repair damage and decide what to reinvest. This closes the intended loop: gather, produce, deliver, develop, and sail again. Cross-sea delivery contracts and a player market remain later development work.

Command through assignments.
The focus is crew composition, destinations, and timing. Heroes act on your orders rather than requiring individual movement and manual ability keys. A good plan connects the people ashore to the support available at sea.

An island and a voyage.
Departure does not pause the harbor. Dividing people between production, defense, and exploration creates pressure on both fronts. The intended challenge is knowing what can continue without you and when your ship needs to return.

A production chain with a destination.
Gathering feeds processing; processing supplies contracts and future voyages. Cargo space, repairs, and crew duties make quantity only one consideration. What you can use or deliver matters as much as what you can collect.

Ships that need care.
The combat direction emphasizes close encounters, boarding, and the condition of ship modules. Damaged propulsion or other fittings should affect what a vessel can do. Engineers and repair decisions belong to the expedition plan, not just the aftermath.

Know what you are bringing home—and what you are risking.
The intended stakes are material: expedition cargo can be lost, ships can require repair, and a threatened harbor can lose stock or have buildings put out of service until repaired. Long-term unlocks and development are not designed as a blanket reset. Returning to port and completing an expedition settlement are distinct steps; the final loss and extraction rules are still being refined.

Do I control each hero like an action game?
The current direction is deployment-based command. You assign tasks and mainly control the ship; heroes handle movement, work, combat, and abilities autonomously. Manual QWER hero control is not the intended system.

Is this an expansion for The Last Expedition?
No. It is a separate game with its own harbor-building and real-time seafaring loop. It carries forward a related visual direction. A connected account experience is planned, but public account and access arrangements have not been announced.

Can I play the version shown here?
The game is in development. The images and descriptions introduce the intended experience; final character art, balancing, and parts of the trade system remain in progress. Public testing, downloads, system requirements, and release dates will be announced when confirmed.