A few more Dungeon upgrades:

And here is a fresh little note from the developers with various clarifications:
Hello, heroes!First and foremost, we are very, very grateful to all of you for the tremendous support following the announcement! We sincerely appreciate it and will work to meet as many of your expectations as possible.
When we decided to take on Heroes of Might and Magic, we understood that working with such a grand and popular franchise is a huge responsibility. Today, we want to share a brief overview of our approach to the design of Olden Era. We have already mentioned some of these ideas in interviews and Q&As, but we decided it would be convenient to gather everything in one place. (Too bad an auto-sort button for ideas hasn't been invented yet — like for artifacts in Olden Era!)
Why us?
Unfrozen Studio was founded in 2016. Our previous game, Iratus: Lord of the Dead, became quite successful — over 500,000 copies were sold. This gave us confidence in our ability to create a high-quality tactical turn-based game with elements of strategy, management, and RPG, and to try something bigger.
Why HoMM?
Mainly because we are fans!
We have played "Heroes" for most of our lives. We wanted to see a new installment of the beloved franchise just as much as you did. And, as they say, if you want something done right — do it yourself.
When we made the decision to start working on the project, there was no sign of any new HoMM titles being released. Therefore, in 2020, we created a gameplay demo and approached Ubisoft, who in 2021 accepted our vision and development principles and then gave the project the green light. We were over the moon! Now, after nearly four years of hard work on the game, we are happy to share these principles with you, friends.
Principle №1: Evolution, not revolution
As you may remember, this was the same principle followed by the creators of HoMM 3 in their time, and we strive to adhere to it as well. Certainly, no game project is possible without new ideas. You cannot succeed by simply mechanically copying what has been done before you. But from the very beginning, it was obvious to us that when working with a "living legend" like HoMM — a franchise that had been on pause for some time — we needed to be very careful and first of all try to preserve the foundation, the very essence of the series. Therefore, we began by analyzing the systems of our favorite "Heroes" titles (specifically 3, 5, and to some extent 2) and thought about how to make them deeper while preserving the "core" gameplay.
Artifacts? We kept the classic system but added sets that do not necessarily have to be completed. Tactical battles? Welcome back, the hexes loved by many! We also added many active unit abilities to make combat choices deeper and more engaging. Hero levels? Everything is as before, but now skills have sub-skills to help customize a build for your playstyle.
Thus, the main goal was to create a game that would be familiar to fans of the series on one hand, and fresh and interesting for both experienced "Heroes" players and those just diving into the fascinating world of HoMM on the other.
Principle №2: Carefully blending old and new
We adhere to this approach at all levels of development. Factions are a combination of old classic "castles" (Temple, Necropolis, partly Dungeon) and some new ideas (Hive, Sylvan, and a sixth, still secret faction). The visuals are done in full 3D, but the perspective remains familiar. The plot unfolds in the original world of Enroth, but the continent we will explore, Jadam, was previously partially revealed only in the Might and Magic RPG series, not in "Heroes," which gave us a certain amount of creative freedom.
You can see a similar approach on the strategic map. Some structures, such as Knowledge Stones and Dragon Utopias, are clearly a tribute to older parts of the series. Others are completely new, both in design and function.
In general, our goal is to remain faithful to classic ideas and imagery while carefully improving and adding new things to the game, modernizing it.
Principle №3: Communication with the Community
Communicating with the community isn't hard when you are fans yourselves — but we also firmly believe that we should align our vision with people outside the studio. Before the announcement, we conducted several in-depth interviews with various types of HoMM players: streamers, esports athletes, and media personalities popular in the "Heroes" community. We sought to find out which features they needed, what they liked most about existing HoMM games, what was missing, and what they would like to change or improve.
Now that the cards are on the table, we intend to stay in touch with you for the same reason. Your opinion is critically important!
But do you have something completely new?
Here are the features that we believe distinguish Olden Era from previous HoMM games:
- More attention to making factions feel unique. New "Faction Laws" are perk trees tied to your starting faction. So even if you conquer more castles, change your main hero, and hire neutral troops, your initial faction choice will matter until the very end.
- Each faction will have not only a unique ability but also a unifying gameplay theme. This means synergy between units will become stronger.
- Non-linear campaign! It is structured somewhat differently than in previous games. Stay tuned for news, we'll tell you more soon!
- Online rating with matchmaking and player profiles. Just press a button and you're in the game!
- A new arena mode with quick battles, similar to a draft. An Arena match lasts about 10-15 minutes.
- Features requested by the competitive community: replays and observer mode for casting.
- New victory conditions.
- The Grail is now obtained differently — we hope players will build it more often!
- Regular work on game balance based on a mathematical model, collected statistics, and actual numerical data.
- A new spell learning system that somewhat mitigates the element of randomness.
- …And much more…
We plan to dive even deeper into the details of new features and mechanics in future devlogs. And of course — we are all looking forward to the game's release in Steam Early Access in the second quarter of 2025!
We are convinced that a new game in the Heroes of Might and Magic series should first and foremost feel like playing those same good old "Heroes" — and we base our work on this.
Of course, it is impossible to go back decades to those long days and nights spent over HoMM in exciting multi-hour battles with friends and loved ones. We didn't set such a task for ourselves because, alas, the past cannot be returned. But we remember and cherish the warm feeling of nostalgia for what once was, and as best we can, we try to ensure that Olden Era remains faithful to the core elements and basic gameplay of the beloved series.
In the near future, we will try to tell you in much more detail about what prompted us to make certain choices during development. The topics of future devblogs will be quite diverse: visual style, main features, key game systems, lore, narrative, and much, much more. In short, stay tuned for news; there will be a lot of interesting things. Your feedback and passion for the project are priceless to us.
And again, a huge thank you to all of you for such a warm reception of the announcement! We are so glad that we can finally tell you all about our game and share news with the community — believe me, staying silent was agonizingly difficult!