15th January 2026
Nomad Games: 2025 Year in Review
Hello again everyone, and welcome to another annual retrospective from our team here at Nomad Games!
2025 was another busy year for us, with our primary focus being the ongoing support of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition in its first year of being available on Steam. We also took time in 2025 to honour the classics too, with our team putting in the work to keep Talisman: Digital Classic Edition a great experience for those looking for the 4th Edition experience.
We’d like to think we did pretty well in 2025, but the best way to become a better studio for you all is by looking back at what went right. Which is exactly why we’ve put together this retrospective on the whole of 2025 - so let’s dive in!
Swapping from Launch to Expansion
If 2024 was all about releasing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, 2025 was us proving the new engine's versatility and making sure we started delivering on our promise of the "definitive" digital edition of Talisman.
In 2025, we launched our first 5th Edition exclusive expansion in the form of Alliances: Fate Beckons, a unique co-op only experience for the first time in Talisman history. Alliances also represented a major technical milestone for the game, as Alliances added a wide range of gameplay and mechanical features to Talisman that we’d never had to tackle before. And while we weren’t able to include the full range of features we’d have liked (for example, we weren’t able to implement AI teammates for solo Alliances players), we’re still massively pleased with the player reception to this all-new expansion.
Alongside Alliances: Fate Beckons, 2025 saw the launch of our first wave of remastered, 4th Edition content from Talisman: Digital Classic Edition in the form of the Frostmarch and Reaper expansions, and the Druid, Minstrel, Jester, Swordsman and Ranger characters. While player and community feedback on this remastered content has been positive, we’ve noted that many players are keen to get their hands on 4th Edition content at a quicker pace than we’ve launched them so far. That’s why this year we’re reevaluating how we can bring 4th Edition content across to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition in a faster way, which we’ll be able to talk more about early in the year. So watch this space!
One of the biggest features of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition we were keen to let players get their hands on was the Deck Editor - and we ended 2025 with over 20,000 custom decks created by players! With some truly wild creations coming out of the community, we’ve been thoroughly impressed by how much creativity the Talisman community has shown.
Alongside bringing all-new and remastered expansions to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition in 2025, we also worked on a number of community-driven quality of life updates throughout the year, culminating in the Anniversary Update. Reception to both the Anniversary Update and all of the other free quality of life updates we rolled out in 2025 from the Talisman community has continued to be positive too, with Steam reviews for the game now sitting at ‘Mostly Positive’.
Talisman: Digital 5th Edition – Now on Console!
We ended 2025 with one massive final milestone: bringing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition to the living room!
On December 23rd, we officially launched the game on Xbox, inviting a whole new audience of adventurers to race for the Crown of Command from the comfort of their couch. Seeing the 5th Edition engine running smoothly on the big screen was a proud moment for the team, and it was the perfect way to cap off the year.
But we aren’t stopping there. We know plenty of you are waiting for your turn on other platforms, so we’re thrilled to confirm that the PlayStation version is just around the corner, launching on January 21st! Bringing a game to console is always a complex beast—certification processes, controller mapping, and UI scaling are no small feats—but getting 5th Edition onto both major consoles within a few weeks of each other sets us up for a huge start to 2026.
Beyond Talisman
2025 wasn’t just about Talisman though, with Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition once again getting a League of Dracula community-ran event, where the top players around the world competed to see who was the greatest hunter of all! The game also got an influx of fresh blood / new players at the end of October too, with the 4th annual Steam Scream Fest welcoming a wave of new faces into the community.
The success of the 2025 League of Dracula and this warm welcome that new players received is a testament to how much love and support the Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition community have shown for the game since it originally launched!
Our Studio & Our Technology
In the lead-up to launching Talisman: Digital 5th Edition we talked multiple times about how making this new version of Talisman offered us a range of exciting opportunities we never would have had otherwise. Specifically, we were able to strip back all of the legacy code and reset the technical foundations of the game. Throughout 2025, we really started to feel the benefits of that clean slate. Working with the refined Talisman engine has allowed us to iterate faster, squash bugs more efficiently, and implement features (like the complex co-op mechanics in Alliances) that simply wouldn’t have been possible in the Classic version of Talisman.
It’s been a year of maturing for our technology, effectively transitioning us from "building the car" to finally being able to drive it properly. This stability is exactly what will allow us to look at accelerating that content pipeline we mentioned earlier.
We also kept up our tradition of being an open and transparent studio in 2025. Whether it was chatting in our Discord, jumping into Reddit threads, or our regular developer updates, maintaining that direct line to you all, remained a core pillar of who we are. We might be a small team in Cheshire, but your passion makes our studio feel massive.
Looking Ahead to 2026
So, what does 2026 hold?
If 2025 was about stabilization and our first steps into new content, 2026 is going to be about momentum. As we mentioned, addressing the speed of bringing 4th Edition content to 5th Edition is our top priority. We know you have favourite cards you’re missing, and we want to get them to you.
But we aren’t just looking backward. You can expect more 5th Edition exclusive content that pushes the boundaries of the digital board game experience. We learned a lot from Alliances, and we’re keen to apply those lessons to what comes next.
Thank you for sticking with us, playing our games, and being part of the Nomad Games journey.
The Nomad Games Team