When Shadow of the Erdtree dropped, no one expected there to be any more Elden Ringcontent, but FromSoftware surprised everyone with the release of Nightreign less than a year later. Combining the intense soulslike elements from the base game into condensed, roguelike runs, you and a group of friends could venture out and take on a variety of enemies and bosses from all sides of the developer’s catalog, but there was always a problem in the back of many players’ minds that the game suffered from in every single match. Because of the constant pressure from the zone closing, you had to rush around the map as fast as possible, attempting to acquire gear and level up, as otherwise, that final encounter with the Nightlord was going to be more than just a light challenge. Enter Crimson Moon, a brand new ARPG roguelike that looks to share a lot of DNA with Nightreign, only it manages to avoid that critical mistake.
By removing the constraint of time and letting you run around and explore as much as you like, Crimson Moon looks to be the kind of game that I would have loved Nightreign to be. You get the same high-risk, high-reward encounters and a range of difficulty modifiers to keep the runs feeling interesting past a single completion, but because you aren’t stressed by an inevitable and unstoppable force pushing you to the next event, the fights and runs should feel a lot more engaging and satisfying to complete both alone and with others. It also means that more roguelike fans will be able to get in on the fun, not needing to learn a highly complex and punishing combat system in a short period and instead being able to experience all the fun that comes with beating down enemies and slowly becoming stronger as they invest more hours in the game.
Crimson Moon Is Like Elden Ring Nightreign Without the Clock
When you first boot up Elden Ring Nightreign, your mind immediately goes to all the cool and interesting toys that didn’t exist in the previous games. There are the character abilities that range from mobility to support, spirit-springs that can be used unmounted, allowing the whole team to traverse the map at an incredible pace, and a much more sophisticated co-op system that puts multiplayer gameplay at the forefront of each run. But then, after exploring the map for a few minutes, night falls, and you have to panic to the safe point, only to do it all over again, assuming you survive. Afterward, you are prompted to take on the Lord, and very few people will be able to make it to the end at a reasonable level, not having enough time or know-how to level up in time to have a better chance of taking down that fearsome foe.
Now that issue does become lessened slightly as you learn what routes to take and how to read the map, but no matter how good you or your team gets at optimizing their runs, you are always in a big hurry. What this does in turn is make a lot of the much cooler parts of the content feel a bit lackluster, like the shifting earth events that generate giant cities or huge craters to explore, but when you actually know what you are doing, the best course of action is to sprint right to the end, grab the reward, and get out of there about as quickly as you came in. Also, good luck making any mistakes or dying, as a single mistake can put the whole team behind and result in a much weaker run that would otherwise have been salvageable had you been given just a little bit more time.
So, turning our attention to Crimson Moon, it is clear that the game is taking a piece of that ARPG, soulslike, roguelike niche that Nightreign had made a major push for back in 2025. However, by removing the time limit and by not artificially pushing you to explore and finish runs in a specific manner, the game appears as though it is much more tailored to those casual fans who would rather do things at their own pace, whilst still having plenty of room for hardcore soulslike enjoyers to really show their skills. It has that brutal and engaging combat that keeps each blow feeling weighty and satisfying, an exploration style that gives you a reason to venture away from the beaten path, and having an end goal in mind without a timer makes the build-up to the end a more controlled journey of growth that other roguelikes have been nailing for years.
By removing the constraint of time and letting you run around and explore as much as you like, Crimson Moon looks to be the kind of game that I would have loved Nightreign to be.
Hades, for example, hailed as one of the greatest roguelikes ever made, has no restrictive time limit in place, unless you decide to take on the Tight Deadline Pact of Punishment. That means that you can fight through biomes and look for secrets for as long as you like, even browsing the stores for a little while if you can’t quite decide whether to go for some extra health or risk it for a better reward down the line. The point is, the game understands that time should not act as an additional difficulty modifier in a genre that is already known for being fairly tricky to begin with, at least until you have a better understanding and grasp of the game’s mechanics and how to play through quicker. In the case of Crimson Moon, the devs have already stated their intentions for the game: to deliver a holistic experience that prioritizes fun from the start over pushing you into a box that ultimately detracts fromenjoyment.
Another important aspect to consider is the fact that the game has co-op as an option, so you and a fellow Nephilim can both charge into the infernal horde and battle for glory and to defend the city once and for all. That means that if you have someone who has a few dozen hours vs someone with zero, you want it to be accessible for the newcomer, but still give them enough incentives to keep on grinding with greater difficulties down the line. That’s where I think Nightreign struggled to capture a wider audience, because the barrier to entry was much higher; a lot of the later game content was either going to be too hard anyway or completely inaccessible from the get-go. Also, after spending all that time creating this interesting map with these unique locations and modifiers, it seems odd that you actually end up ignoring almost all of it chasing stat buffs and weapon upgrades.
What it comes down to is personal preference. If you are someone who is really up for the challenge and loves speeding around and optimizing routes, then Nightreign is going to stick right away, but for the rest of the ARPG demographic, Crimson Moon is a much more appealing proposition that can still give you a hefty difficulty curve beyond the first couple of successful runs. There is also a lot of potential for later content to be added to the game in the form of additional areas and further settings to improve the existing runs, but unlike The Forsaken Hollows, you will get to see all those shiny new things without having to fly through things at Mach 10.
Crimson Moon
- Released
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2026
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Intense Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
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ProbablyMonsters
- Publisher(s)
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ProbablyMonsters
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
- Number of Players
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Single-player
