Red Dead Redemption 2 flirts with the survival genre, probably more than most titles like it. You need to manage Arthur’s cores—health, stamina, and Dead Eye—all of which are affected by things like hunger, fatigue, and weather. Eating, resting, and appropriate clothing help keep them up. The world has realistic details like hair growth, weight changes from eating, bathing, and weapon cleanliness. You can hunt, cook, and maintain your horse, and there are optional survivalist challenges tied to crafting, fishing, and hunting. However, it’s still not technically a survival game, but Neojac Entertainment’s Frontier Legends on Steam all but turns it into one by transforming the Wild West into a dangerous survival sandbox.
Frontier Legends isn’t just a survival game from a mechanical standpoint either, as it takes the crafting and exploration loop of games like Valheim, where venturing beyond the borders of your base can turn an otherwise quiet morning into an unforgiving fight for survival. Top that off with the settlement building elements of Medieval Dynasty, and it thrusts players into what it might actually feel like to try and get a foothold for humanity in the Wild West. Expected to launch on Steam Early Access this spring, Frontier Legends might be the next game for fans of Red Dead Redemption 2, Valheim, and Medieval Dynasty if they’re looking for quite the hodgepodge of genres and gameplay.
Frontier Legends Turns the Wild West Into a Survival Sandbox
Frontier Legends is an open-world Western survival RPG that drops players into the frontier with a wide-open blank slate in front of them. You start out as a newcomer stepping off the train, forced to hunt, gather, craft, and construct your own homestead while navigating harsh weather, wildlife, and even the threat of other players. From there, it opens up, allowing you to become a trader, lawman, builder, or outlaw, all while expanding your settlement. It feels like an attempt to put the survival gameplay of titles like Valheim into Red Dead Redemption 2‘s setting (complete with similar visuals), and it throws in some Medieval Dynasty for good measure.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
Frontier Legends’ Core Features
- OPEN-WORLD SURVIVAL — Harsh frontier wilderness with hunger, thirst, stamina, wildlife, and outlaws to manage.
- CRAFTING AND RESOURCE GATHERING — Collect wood, stone, ore, and other materials for tools, weapons, and structures.
- SETTLEMENT BUILDING SYSTEM — Grow a small camp into a thriving frontier town with farming, crafting, and defenses.
- NPC MANAGEMENT ROLES — Recruit and assign settlers to tasks like gathering, crafting, farming, and defense.
- DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT — Changing weather and day-night cycles affect gameplay and exploration.
- PLAYER IDENTITY CHOICES — Choose roles like hunter, trader, builder, bandit, lawman or something in between with reputational impact.
- HORSE TAMING AND RIDING — Find, tame, train, and ride wild horses with unique attributes.
- QUESTS AND DISCOVERY — Explore ruins, forgotten camps, puzzles, and legendary treasures.
- MULTIPLAYER CO-OP/COMPETITION — Team up or compete with other players for trading, building, raids, and events.
- COMMUNITY EVENTS AND CHALLENGES — Participate in seasonal content with rewards and recognition.
At the center of Frontier Legends‘ gameplay loop is your town, which you literally build from the ground up. Starting with a small camp and then working your way up with the resources you gather out in its open world, you can eventually build a thriving settlement on the frontier. It will need to stay running and in good condition, though, and that requires recruiting NPC settlers and assigning them to various tasks around the town like farming, crafting, gathering, and defense. Meanwhile, you can venture out into the harsh wilderness in search of more materials and treasure, but that also means braving the elements. Fortunately, you can tame and ride horses (yet another similarity to Red Dead Redemption 2) to make your journey across the open world of Frontier Legends a bit easier to manage.
The game will eventually allow you to choose a role, whether it’s hunter, trader, builder, bandit, lawman or something more nuanced. It’s unclear whether this will be done through skill trees and unique abilities or something else, but the implication that you can be something “in between” suggests a mix-and-match skill system. This role will ultimately come into play in a variety of ways, but learning how your unique skills can help your community thrive or prevent other communities from doing so will be paramount to survival in Frontier Legends‘ Wild West.
What to Expect From Frontier Legends Early Access
- EARLY ACCESS FEEDBACK LOOP – Devs want direct player input to rapidly implement changes and shape the game alongside the community.
- YEAR-LONG ROADMAP TARGET – Early Access expected to last most of this year, aiming for full release by mid 2026, depending on feedback and polishing needs.
- EXPANDED COMBAT LEVELS MAPS – Full version plans include new combat abilities, progression up to level 100, additional world maps, and mod support.
- FEATURE-RICH CURRENT BUILD – Early Access already includes a wide range of core systems detailed on the store page.
- GRADUAL PRICE INCREASE – Price may rise over time based on added content, though no major jump is currently expected.
- STEAM DISCORD COMMUNITY INPUT – Ongoing dialogue through Steam forums and Discord, with player suggestions feeding into the development roadmap.
Upon initial glance at its Steam page alone, Frontier Legends appears to be without a release date at the moment. However, developer Neojac Entertainment has confirmed the survival game will be coming to Steam Early Access sometime this spring, bringing a host of substantial features along with it. The extent of what will be included in the Early Access release hasn’t been explicitly stated, though the developer did mention players can expect to see everything “listed under our description page.”
Being in Early Access means we can listen directly to players and implement changes to the game quickly to keep up with our community.
From there, the developer plans to add “additional combat abilities” and increase the character level cap to 100, along with adding content suitable for that increase. There will also be “more world maps for players to explore in the full release,” and there are plans for mod support that will allow players to expand Frontier Legends even further. As far as a time frame for Steam Early Access goes, Neojac has stated that its goal is to keep the game in development for the “better part of this year,” aiming for a full release by mid 2026.
Whether Frontier Legends ultimately delivers on that ambition remains to be seen, but the pitch is clear. It takes the romanticized setting of the Wild West and strips away the safety net with some demanding survival gameplay. For fans who have long wondered what Red Dead Redemption 2 might feel like if it pushed its own survival systems harder and its world fought back more aggressively, this could be an intriguing answer. Early Access will likely determine how far it can all go, but if Neojac can balance its town-building system with the tension of danger beyond the campfire, Frontier Legends could carve out a space that the genre hasn’t dipped into all that much over the years.
Frontier Legends is coming to Steam Early Access in Spring 2026.
