My favorite indie Elder Scrolls-alike has finally added its take on the series' best spell

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I want a train of ugly little skeleton guys following me around everywhere.

Malenia-type individual in Dread Delusion
(Image credit: DreadXP, Lovely Hellplace)

When I play the Elder Scrolls games, I usually like to crouch walk around backstabbing guys like some kind of Aldi-brand Garrett from Thief, but I also always carve out space for Conjuration magic when things get hairy, summoning a Storm Atronach or some manner of stinky skeleton to fight for me. Work smarter, not harder! In its Halloween update, the magical mini-Morrowind Dread Delusion is now letting us do just that.

The Rise of the Skeletons update adds a new bone boy-summoning spell to the game, located on a new island in the game's asteroid field open world and locked behind some presumably necromantic combat challenges. 

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Dread Delusion skeleton summoning spell
(Image credit: DreadXP)

It's a perfect fit for Dread Delusion's fiction as well, which celebrates the undead, curses, and copious biological defilement. If you've been undecided about a game to get you into the festive Halloween spirit, you could do far worse is all I'm saying.

As an aside, I love how Dread Delusion's world being a collection of floating islands makes adding new areas and quests so organic and intuitive: Just chuck a new floating island in there and we're good to go.

This update seems to be a bit of an appetizer before the main event of Dread Delusion's Clockwork Kingdom update, also set to arrive sometime this fall. The Clockwork Kingdom will be Dread Delusion's third hub area, offering a new leg of its main quest in the realm of a mad machine god.

The Rise of the Skeletons update also adds a number of quality of life changes and bug fixes, with Dread Delusion shaping up to be something quite special in early access. I loved this RPG even in its most bare bones state at its initial release, and I can't wait to see its final form.

Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.