If I had a penny for every time I heard that some ex-Bethesda and BioWare developers were making a game together, I'd probably have enough to afford the seventeeth remaster of Skyrim. That's not to disparage Hawthorn, though, quite the opposite: this game looks extremely cute.
Comprised of a team of devs who have worked on some completely classic titles, like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Dragon Age, from a studio called NEARStudios, Hawthorn is a cosy RPG where you play as a number of different woodland animals. Skyrim, but Wind of the Willows, is the consensus online.
As a basic proof-of-concept demo launches this week on Steam as part of the June edition of Steam Next Fest, the team at NEARStudios is asking for crowdfunding via their website. Hawthorn previously had a Kickstarter back in 2025 which raised over $450,000, but since then the studio has reached out to and has been approached by several publishers, but has been unable to come to a deal.
In a recent Steam post, the team stated these offers were: "not enough money to substantially add to the game experience when contrasted with the amount of revenue share we would have...
