Alabaster Dawn Hits Steam Early Access May 7 — CrossCode Devs' Action RPG Returns

The CrossCode Crew Is Back, and This Time They Brought a Whole World

Mark your calendars, RPG fans — Radical Fish Games is dropping Alabaster Dawn into Steam Early Access on May 7, 2026. That's two days from now. If you ever ran around the Sapphire Ridge in CrossCode trying to figure out which way the puzzle physics were going to send your ball next, this is the team you remember, and they've been heads-down for years building something that looks meaningfully bigger than what they shipped before.

Alabaster Dawn is a 2.5D top-down action RPG set on Tiran Sol, a world that has been swallowed up in the shadow of an entity called Nyx. The gods are gone. The people are gone. The land is a ruin. You play Juno, the Outcast Chosen, and your job is to wake humanity back up, figure out where everyone went, and unravel the mystery of what Nyx actually is. It is the kind of premise that gives the Radical Fish team room to lean into both the narrative depth and the combat-system design they're known for.

The Combat Looks Like It Pulled From the Right Inspirations

Here is the part that has the action RPG community paying attention: Radical Fish has been pretty open about the fact that Alabaster Dawn's combat system pulls inspiration from Devil May Cry and Kingdom Hearts. In a top-down 2.5D format. That combination is not something we've seen pulled off cleanly very often, and the early gameplay footage suggests the team has been cooking on this for a while. Fast aerial combos, stylish dodge mechanics, weapon-swap variety — the whole "stylish action" toolkit, but mapped onto a perspective that lets the team also build out exploration and puzzle design the way CrossCode did.

For anyone who spent hours in CrossCode wishing the combat had a little more flow-state aerial work and a little less "stand on the platform and time the throw," Alabaster Dawn is the spiritual sequel that addresses that exact wishlist item. The team has talked publicly about wanting to evolve what they thought was the most rough-edged part of CrossCode's combat, and the early Alabaster Dawn combat showcases suggest they've been pretty methodical about it.

What Early Access Includes — and What's Coming Later

The Alabaster Dawn Early Access build launching May 7 will let players play through the prologue and the first story chapter, plus most of the second chapter — Radical Fish is estimating around ten hours of content for the initial release. That's a substantial chunk for an Early Access kickoff, and the team has been clear that they're planning to spend at least two years in Early Access while they build out the full game.

The full release is targeting seven main story chapters and approximately forty hours of total playtime, which puts Alabaster Dawn in the same scope range as some of the more ambitious indie RPGs that have shipped in recent years. For an indie team, that is a meaningful commitment to a long-arc story experience — and the Early Access cadence gives the developers room to iterate on combat tuning, puzzle design, and pacing based on player feedback rather than locking everything in at launch.

The Indie RPG Lane Is Stacked This Spring

May 2026 is shaping up to be an absolutely loaded month for indie game launches across PC and console. Subnautica 2 is hitting Early Access on May 14, Mixtape arrived on May 7 with Annapurna's coming-of-age music adventure, Outbound is rolling out the cozy camper-van exploration game on May 12, and Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is bringing the dwarf-mining FPS roguelite on May 20. Alabaster Dawn drops into that lineup as the CrossCode-evolved action RPG entry, and the early word from previews suggests it is going to hold its own.

For RPG fans, May 7 is the day to mark — Steam Early Access, ten hours of opening content, and the combat system the CrossCode team has been refining for years. If the prologue lands the way the previews suggest, Alabaster Dawn is going to be one of the more talked-about indie launches of the spring, and the kind of Early Access ride that is genuinely worth being there for from the start. Bring snacks, charge the controller, and prepare to chase the shadow of Nyx — Tiran Sol is open for business in two days.

Sources: Gematsu Coverage of Alabaster Dawn Early Access Launch (April 9, 2026), RPGamer Coverage of Steam Early Access Release (April 2026), Power Up Gaming Alabaster Dawn Combat Preview (May 1, 2026)