16th February 2026

OUR DIGITAL BOARD GAME STUDIO UPDATE - JANUARY 2026

We said we were going to hit the ground running in 2026, and we meant it. January has been a whirlwind of launches, milestones, and patches for our small games studio. From bringing Talisman to new screens to polishing up the classics, we’ve been busy making sure your digital board game experience is better than ever.

Here is everything that went down in the Nomad Games studio this January.

The biggest headline in January was that Talisman: Digital 5th Edition has officially now landed on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S!

On Xbox, we launched on December 23rd (just in time for Christmas!) and then followed that up with the launch of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition onto PlayStation on January 21st. Just like with the Steam release, we’ve implemented our DLC carryover system for Classic content, meaning that if you own expansions and characters on your console digitally already, you’ll automatically be granted free access to their remastered versions in Digital 5th Edition!

It’s been a long journey to get the 5th Edition ready for the living room, but we are thrilled to see players on both Xbox and PlayStation finally rolling dice on the big screen. So far, player reception has been positive on both platforms, with many of you saying how much more comfortable an experience it is compared to the previous edition of Talisman.

Check out the game getting put through it’s paces by @FireOnXbox if you want to see it in action on console:

Alongside releasing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition onto new platforms, we also took some more time in January to come back to Talisman: Digital Classic Edition.

Specifically, we updated the Steam, Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch versions of Talisman: Digital Classic Edition to bring them all-in line with each other and re-establish cross-platform multiplayer.

Alongside these updates, we also launched a new way for mobile players to experience everything that the 4th Edition of Talisman has to offer. With the new Talisman Classic Complete on both iOS and Android, players can own everything we’ve ever released for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition in one single, easy to make purchase.

Find out all about it in our FAQ for Talisman: Classic Complete.

Finally, if you missed it earlier in the month, we published our annual "Lessons Learned" Retrospective in January. Instead of just listing what we did in 2025, we took a deep dive into what went right, what went wrong, and how we are changing things for the better in 2026. If you’re interested in the "business" side of indie dev, it’s worth a read!

Check it out here on our website.

Speaking of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we hit two incredible milestones on Steam this month that we just had to share.

First, thanks to your feedback, reviews and our recent updates, the game has officially reached a ‘Mostly Positive’ review rating on Steam! We’ve been working hard to address your launch feedback, and seeing that score climb has been a huge morale boost for the team.

Second, and perhaps even crazier: Our games studio has now surpassed 5 MILLION units on Steam! Whether you’ve been with us since the early days of Classic or just joined for 5th Edition, thank you. You are the reason we get to keep doing this.

We got another good batch of questions over the Christmas break, so lets dive into answering them!

From Kyle Huckins via our website

“Are there any plans to add capabilities for players to set up homebrew cards? While there are likely challenges that could come up in multiplayer, and limitations on what a homebrew card could actually do, it would be neat to be able to play with some of the communities creations.”

This is something that we’d like to implement and give players the ability to create, but it would require designing, coding and implementing an entire system to allow players to create their own cards - not a small feat!

We’ve definitely thought about it though, as it’s one of the next logical steps to follow on from the 5th Edition Deck Editor feature. Given that it’d take as long (if not longer) to create as a full expansion, we’d need to find the right time/way to do it if we did eventually decide to come around to it!

From Dani Foy via our website

“Thank you for the response to my mailbag question (GGs Sun). I'm looking forward to any and all content for Talisman 5e, thanks again for your hard work on the game!”

You’re very welcome, we’ll keep up the hard work for sure!

From Stephen Westwood via our website

“I am a long time player of the digital 4th edition, but played my first Talisman classic game, after an hiatus , and a couple of issues were still apparent...

The statistics page is a jumbled mess which I doubt reflects any truths as to my progress. Can you not just add a reset button to it? Not to go back to zero XP of course, just the times played etc etc. Apparently my most played character was dreadknight, until I played my game as a dark cultist. When I checked my stats after that game, my most played character was (magically) the cleric. I doubt either of them is the correct choice to be honest. Anyway, I'd be fine to set it all back and that would actually be a good feature for setting personal challenges.

Secondly the AI are still pretty stupid. I don't expect you want to put any time into changing this on the old game but it's a shame. I prefer to play on my own and they aren't much of a challenge. The thing that struck me, and I know it's not an isolated case, was that once I'd been to the crown of command and started the 'war of seasons' I don't think any of the other characters had the slightest clue that they were then supposed to go through the woodlands to win. I turn off a few of these specific endings because, really, they only understand getting to the crown.

Anyway, thanks for all your work on it and keeping it alive.””

Back last year we made some changes to how both digital versions of Talisman track player information and statistics, which resulted in some players seeing odd results in their stats page. We then released a follow-up update to resolve those issues, and from what we’ve seen, 99% of players have had their stats restored to what they should have been.

It sounds like you’re still having issues though, which we can look into if you email your Nomad Account email and stats issues to support@nomadgames.co.uk. As you’ve reached out to us via email already, we can pass your details onto our support team for you - but if anyone happens to be reading this who is also having issues, please let us know!

As for the AI issues, this is mostly due to how the AI was originally programmed in Talisman: Digital Edition when it first launched nearly 12 years ago. We originally programmed the AI to handle the main board with no expansions, and act according to it’s best interests based on what is on the board. As we added more and more expansions, characters and cards to the game over those 12 years, we kept giving the AI more things to consider and evaluate based on what is happening on the board.

Given that it was only really designed to handle the main board with no expansions, we’d like to think it manages pretty well! Untangling all of the code involved with how the AI functions in Talisman: Digital Classic Edition now would be an absolute mess - in fact, at one point we estimated that developing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition took less time than it would have to even half-untangle the AI code for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition.

From Kung Fu MurpH via Discord

“Good evening everyone! You probably get asked this question often, but is there any chance that the 5th edition of Talisman will ever have a Mac port?”

Is there a chance? Absolutely.

Does that chance depend on a lot of unlikely things happening before it can become true? Sadly, yes.

As a small studio, we’ve got limited resources to put into developing both new games and porting existing games to new platforms. So as a good example, when we were looking at where to bring Talisman: Digital 5th Edition after Steam, we took into account the number of sales and users on both Xbox and PlayStation - giving us hard evidence that there is a Talisman audience on both of those platforms who would be willing to purchase a new version of the game.

When it comes to a Mac version of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, this is where the issues arise - if we’re looking at sales and users on Mac, the numbers that we can see are too low for us to justify making a Mac version. In order to get back what we’d have to spend making a Mac version, it would take decades based on our forecasts. It’s not that we’re just chasing what will make the most money though - time spent on a Mac version would take the majority of our development resources away from things like remastered Classic expansions or other quality of life updates.

So right now, it doesn’t make sense as a business for us to make a Mac port. If that changes in the future, we’d certainly be open to it - but for now, we’d rather be transparent about our reasons for not making one.

Hope that answers your question, even if it’s not the answer you were hoping for!

And that’s the end of this month's studio update! Don’t forget, if you’ve got questions you want to ask the Nomad team, you can always send your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk, or fill in the form below!

And if you want to keep up to date with everything we’re doing as a studio, follow us on all the places we are online!

 
Thomas Young