Long defunct game developer Troika is best known today for the dark roleplaying masterpiece/dropped bag of spanners Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. But the year before Bloodlines simultaneously spelled doom and immortality for the studio, Troika released The Temple of Elemental Evil, a similarly ambitious and similarly buggy adaptation of the Dungeon & Dragons scenario written by D&D's cocreators Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer.

The Temple of Elemental Evil is fondly remembered by D&D fans for its meticulous adaptation of the scenario into the then newly released 3.5 edition. "It may not be the best D&D game, but it is the most D&D game," PC Gamer's Jody Macgregor wrote back in 2017. "Being alone at a computer isn't the same as sitting round a table shouting every time someone rolls a 20 or putting on a silly voice and making everyone laugh, but The Temple of Elemental Evil gets surprisingly close to recreating that atmosphere."

The RPG has been quietly kept alive by modders for years. But now, more than two decades after it launched, The Temple of Elemental Evil is getting a proper Steam release.

The RPG is being published by Sneg, a Nightdive Studios-ish outfit that has rereleased numerous forgotten gems like Chasm: The Rift and my beloved Blade of Darkness. While not full remasters a-la Nightdive, both games were carefully updated and optimised for modern machines. The publisher's most recent project was Captain Blood, a pirate-themed hack 'n' slash that sailed into development hell in the mid 2000s and didn't emerge until earlier this year.

By the sounds of it, The Temple of Elemental Evil will receive similar treatment. The Steam page says the launch will include "over a thousand fixes and improvements", which includes enhanced AI, a refined interface, and "countless" quality of life updates." Sneg points out that these updates build upon decades of preservation work by modders, calling out "the incredible efforts of the Circle of Eight and Temple+ modding communities" in maintaining the RPG over the years.

The Temple of Elemental Evil arrives on Steam on December 10. Of course, you don't have to go far for a fantastic CRPG D&D experience these days, with Baldur's Gate 3 having rolled a natural 97 back in 2023. The question is whether anyone's willing or able to pick up the baton, since Larian is leaving behind the Forgotten Realms to pursue its own projects. Wizards of the Coast has promised fans that it's going to do RPGs "as serious as BG3", but I don't envy the developer tasked with drinking from that particular chalice.