Valorborn Interview

When looking within a sandbox RPG, there should be as few limitations as possible on what can be done. This is not an easy undertaking, or something that can be done quickly. The small team at Laps Games has been hard at work on Valorborn, tinkering with the game through Early Access on Steam to make an exciting sandbox to dive around in. Joining RPGamer to answer some questions about the game are Noris and Onurhan from Laps Games to discuss the present and the future of Valorborn. Anyone interested in checking out the game can find it available here on Steam.

Ryan Costa (RPGamer): With Early Access out for a few weeks now, what aspect of the Valorborn‘s expansive open world has the team been most proud of how it turned out?

Laps Games: One of the things we are most proud of in Valorborn is that the world does not feel like simple background decoration. It was very important for us that players could actually reach many of the places they see, enter buildings, meet different characters, and carve their own path through the world.

We never wanted the open world to feel like just a large map. We wanted exploration to carry a sense of danger, opportunity, and curiosity. Seeing villages, camps, wilderness areas, and discoverable locations come together to create that feeling of freedom has been one of the most rewarding parts for us.

Of course, since we are still in Early Access, many parts of the map are currently closed off, even though players can already see them from a distance. It has been exciting to see players curious about what they might discover in those areas in the future. At the same time, we want to be honest: while many buildings are already enterable, we did not have enough unique content for every location at the initial Early Access launch. That is one of the areas we are now working hard to improve.

RPGamer: Conversely, what aspect is first and foremost on the team’s mind to update to the best that it can be?

LG: Right now, our first priority is to make the core experience as solid as possible. Since the Early Access launch, our main focus has been performance, bug fixing, the save system, inventory, crafting, and overall usability.

UI/UX is also a very important area for us. Valorborn has large and interconnected systems, so players need to be able to understand and use them more comfortably. In the coming period, we want to improve the interface, tutorial flow, and general in-game guidance to make the experience much clearer and smoother.

RPGamer: Survival in such an open sandbox can be very difficult. With the methodical pace that’s set, how easy will it be for players to find differing paths for overcoming obstacles during free exploration?

LG: We do not want Valorborn to have only one “correct” way to play. Some players may want to progress through combat, while others may prefer avoiding danger, trading, becoming stronger through crafting, building a camp, or exploring more carefully.

The pace of the game is intentionally more methodical. We want players to read the environment, evaluate risks, and find their own solutions. Even now, direct combat is not always the only option. In the future, we want to expand this freedom even further with more quest solutions, a deeper economy, stronger faction relationships, camp systems, and alternative progression paths.

RPGamer: Factions are presented front and centre in Valorborn. How deeply can the established factions be affected by player choices currently, and what does the future of factions look like?

LG: Factions are a major part of Valorborn’s long-term vision, but we want to be transparent about their current state in Early Access. At the moment, player actions do not yet have a meaningful direct impact on the Thareon Kingdom, Auris, the secret organization, or the bandit groups.

The core foundation for this system is already embedded in the game, but it is not fully unlocked for players yet. We are still experimenting with how faction reactions, reputation, and world consequences should work, and we are not satisfied enough with the current version to present it as a complete feature.

In the future, we want player choices to affect faction relationships, trade, safety, territory, and the balance of power in the world. Our goal is for factions to become living forces that react to what the player does, rather than just groups that exist in the background or provide quests. This is one of the systems we want to expand carefully throughout Early Access.

RPGamer: Quests generally follow a through line for player progression that feels structured. Will opportunities to explore lead to quest variety that players can find unique to their playthrough?

LG: Currently, Valorborn has a fairly structured quest flow, especially in the early parts of the game. This is intentional, because we want to help players understand the basic systems, give them a clear sense of direction, and make the onboarding experience easier. At the same time, we are still not finished with the first starting kingdom area, so the current quest structure should not be seen as the final version of how quests will work in Valorborn.

Our long-term goal is to build a much more organic quest and event system. We want to create a pool of quests, encounters, and world events that can be triggered by the player’s behavior, choices, exploration, and actions in the world. The hope is that these moments will feel natural when they appear, rather than feeling like fixed content placed on a checklist.

This will exist alongside more traditional core questlines, but over time we want exploration to lead to more varied and personal experiences. Ideally, two players should be able to move through the same region and encounter different situations based on how they play.

RPGamer: As Valorborn progresses, how will the vision for loot expand beyond what’s currently implemented?

LG: As Valorborn progresses, we want loot to become much more than simply finding items with higher numbers. One of the things we are currently looking at is how loot from defeated enemies should feel. Yes, players can take equipment from characters they defeat, but unless that character is important or unique in the world, their gear will usually be lower in quality compared to what the player can craft, purchase, or discover in special locations.

Valorborn already has different quality tiers and randomized stats in item production, and we want to build more depth around that. Over time, crafting, trading, exploration, and rare discoveries should all become meaningful ways to find strong equipment. Special locations, dangerous areas, and major encounters can also become sources of unique or legendary items.

Our goal is for weapons, armor, and clothing to avoid feeling generic or locked into strict class rules. We want players to have freedom in how they build their characters and curate their best equipment around their own playstyle. For example, when magic is implemented, we do not want magic users to be limited only to robes or light clothing, as they often are in fantasy games, films, or books. If a player wants to build a heavily armored wizard, why not? That kind of freedom is exactly the direction we want Valorborn’s equipment system to move toward.

RPGamer: How will crafting change as the Early Access roadmap is updated?

LG: Crafting is still quite basic in the current version, but it is one of the systems we want to expand heavily throughout Early Access. Right now, the foundation is there, but we want crafting to become more useful, more readable, and more connected to the rest of the world.

One of our goals is to improve crafting stations themselves: how they function, how they look, what they produce, and how clearly players understand their purpose. We also want to expand production chains, so crafting feels less like isolated recipes and more like part of a larger economy.

Long term, crafting should play an important role in Valorborn’s wider ecosystem. It should connect with factions, trade, settlements, and resource flow. We want players to not only produce items, but also understand how production affects the world around them and influence that system in both positive and negative ways.

RPGamer: Are there any aspects of the announced roadmap featured that can be expanded upon currently?

LG: The most important part of the roadmap is strengthening the foundation of the game first. For us, adding new content is important, but making the current experience stable and enjoyable is just as important. During the first stage of Early Access, performance, bug fixing, save/load issues, UI/UX, and general usability are among our biggest priorities.

We are also working on improving the automated work task system. At the moment, it can sometimes behave inconsistently or fail to execute commands properly for player characters, so this is an important system for us to stabilize and redesign where needed. Combat is also getting a facelift. We want encounters to feel better, read more clearly, and give players more satisfying tactical choices.

After that, we want to focus on new regions, new enemies, caves, more quests, deeper faction systems, and improvements to camps and settlements. We see the roadmap not as a rigid calendar, but as a living plan shaped by player feedback. We want to update our priorities based on what players need most.

RPGamer: Have we seen all the skills that will be on offer or are more coming in the pipeline?

LG: No, not at all. The current skill system is only the beginning of what we want to build in Valorborn.

During Early Access, we plan to deepen and adjust the existing skills while also adding new ones that support different playstyles and give players more meaningful choices. This includes skills tied to new weapon types, professions, survival, crafting, combat roles, and eventually magic.

Our goal is not just to increase the number of skills, but to make progression feel more useful and more connected to how each player wants to experience the world. As new systems are added, the skill system will continue to evolve alongside them.

RPGamer: As a primarily two-person development team, are there any plans for future updates that would be ideally able to implement in the future?

LG: Being a small development team naturally slows us down in some areas, but it also allows us to stay close to the community and react quickly to player feedback. That is one of the biggest advantages of Early Access for us.

At the same time, Valorborn is a passion project, so we are careful about how we expand the team and who we bring into the project. A bigger team can help, but only if the people involved truly understand the game, its direction, and the experience we are trying to build.

That said, we do want to get help where it makes sense. With the support of the community, we can work with external specialists for areas such as UI/UX, art, animation, audio, or other specific tasks, while keeping Valorborn’s identity intact.

Long term, we have much bigger ideas for the game: deeper faction wars, a dynamic economy, advanced settlement systems, guild structures, more regions, new enemies, new playstyles, and larger sandbox systems. We do not want to promise everything at once, but our goal is to keep growing Valorborn into a living sandbox RPG over the years.

We are extremely grateful to everyone playing, supporting, and giving feedback on Valorborn.

RPGamer: What is something that you would love to share about the game not discussed above?

LG: One thing we would love to share is why we chose Early Access instead of something like Kickstarter. We wanted players to be able to jump directly into the development journey, experience the game for themselves, and help shape its future with us.

The amount of feedback, reports, reviews, and discussions we have received so far, both positive and negative, has been incredibly valuable. It helps us understand what players enjoy, what frustrates them, and what they hope to see from Valorborn in the future.

Of course, we have our own clear vision for Valorborn, and we cannot add everything that every player asks for. But being close to the community is very important to us, and we believe that this relationship will help Valorborn become a much stronger game over time.

Valorborn is our passion project, and we plan to work on it for many years. Our goal is to create an outstanding sandbox RPG where players can write their own stories and where each playthrough can feel unique. We are excited to build this living, breathing medieval fantasy world not only as developers, but also as fellow gamers who genuinely want to play this kind of game ourselves.

RPGamer would like to thank Noris and Onurhan from Laps Games for their time answering these questions, as well as Zachery Bennett of Stride PR for making it all happen. Those looking to join this expansive sandbox RPG can do so now on Steam’s Early Access.