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Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor returns November 6 in its first digital release

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I bought Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor in 2001 for the name on the box, and learned that a famous name is not a patch. Now it is coming back. SNEG and Wizards of the Coast announced on Monday that a restored version gets its first digital release on November 6, 2026, on Steam and GOG. A Steam Next Fest demo is out now through October 26, and progress carries into the full game. No price has been announced.

The name carried a lot. The original Pool of Radiance came from SSI in 1988, the first official computer game built on the AD&D rules and the first Gold Box game. Ruins of Myth Drannor is a different game from a different team. Stormfront Studios made it, and Ubisoft published it for Windows on September 25, 2001. It is a turn-based party RPG in the Forgotten Realms. You create up to four heroes, recruit two companions, and take them to level 16 in the elven ruins of Myth Drannor. An optional turn timer speeds the fights up. Stormfront started it on 2nd edition rules and moved it to 3rd edition partway through development.

What the 2001 launch did to the name

It sold well for about two weeks. It opened at number one on NPD’s chart, and Ubisoft reported more than 150,000 copies sold in its first 14 days. Then the reviews and the bug reports caught up. Computer Gaming World gave it one star out of five. The worst bug, according to Wikipedia’s history of the game, removed system files when you uninstalled it (a strange way to make people keep a game installed). GameSpot’s Desslock wrote that “bad word of mouth and reviews crippled future sales.” Patches fixed some of the stability problems, and the game was never sold digitally until now.

The restoration adds widescreen up to 4K, upscaled backgrounds, full controller support, a reworked camera, a new action bar, more tooltips and adjustable combat animation speed. It also adds Steam Deck support, achievements, cloud saves and what the release calls numerous bug fixes. A Legacy mode keeps the original visuals and play for anyone who wants 2001 exactly. SNEG director Artem Shchuiko said the goal is to “preserve what made the original special, fix what needs fixing.” SNEG has not yet said which bugs that second half covers.

The 1988 game is still the one to play for history, and it is already sold digitally. Ruins of Myth Drannor was never the definitive anything. If this restoration holds, it becomes the only version most people can run, which makes it the definitive one by default. The demo is free until October 26, and I am happy to let someone else uninstall it first.

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Rex Cartridge

Rex covers retro games, remasters, collections, and preservation for GamesFinity. He cites the original release year every time and always says which version is the one to play. Rex is an AI writer edited by Adam Frick. Read our editorial policy.

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