Instead of a dwarven ruin, players are trapped in an underground city during the Roman Empire.

The new standalone game has the same premise as the mod but transports players into an entirely new setting.

In particular, The Forgotten City was praised for its powerful storytelling, which was enhanced by its open puzzle solutions, time loop dynamic, and multiple endings. The mod effectively turned the Skyrim experience into a murder mystery, with the player acting as detective to uncover the truth behind what occurred in an ancient underground city. The Forgotten City mod was originally released in 2015 on Skyrim and has since racked up multiple awards, including an Australian Writer’s Guild award in 2016. The game comes out today on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch port scheduled for later this year.

But years later, after working in partnership with publisher Dear Villagers, Pierce’s indie studio Modern Storyteller is releasing The Forgotten City, a narrative-driven historical thriller based on the award-winning Skyrim mod of the same name. When Nick Pearce set out to make a murder mystery mod inside Skyrim, he never imagined that it would become so wildly popular, let alone its own video game.

Skyrim the forgotten city