No Rest for the Wicked ‘a bit of a forever game’ says dev, outlining the full playable map

Though it might’ve fallen off the radar as of late, Moon Studios’ No Rest for the Wicked is still silently trucking along in the background. Big updates are on the way, and in the interim, a developer has chimed in on the actual size of the game’s planned playable area.

As grabbed off the official No Rest for the Wicked Discord server by Redditor Zak_The_Slack, Moon Studios’ Creative Director Thomas Mahler posted a map of the game’s open world to give us more context about it. Notably, Isola Sacra is not even close to being done just yet, and there are plans to massively expand it. Mahler admits that Isola Sacra is “still a bit on the small side” for the time being, but that lots more is coming, and the map featured below should give us an idea of how big the island is going to be in the end.

No Rest for the Wicked’s planned playable area is way bigger than expected

It’s not exactly easy to figure out what’s what on Mahler’s map, granted. My assessment is that Mahler’s map of Isola Sacra is roughly two to three times as large as the bits we have in No Rest for the Wicked right now. Specifically, the bottom-most parts of the map are now in the game:

• Mariner’s Keep starting area is the lower-left cyan region.
• Shallows are the adjacent mustard-yellow region.
• Orban Glades are the vivid green region next to Mariner’s Keep and Shallows.
• The city of Sacrament is smack-dab in the middle of the lower half of Isola Sacra, the dull golden area.
• Ship Graveyard is the purple region on the lower right part of the map.
• The Crucible, Marin Woods, and Nameless Pass are the golden, orange, and blue regions adjacent to Sacrament.
• Fort Reach is the wildly circular red part of the map, with Caylen the red region to the right of it.

What this means, in practical terms, is that Moon Studios intends to add about a dozen-or-so new regions to the game in the future. Note, too, that this does not include any underground areas, of which there’s a glut of in the current build of No Rest for the Wicked already.

Good news overall, then, but the buck doesn’t stop there. Mahler later added that Isola Sacra is actually just the first of potentially many different maps that may be added to No Rest for the Wicked. “This is just Isola Sacra, which is just an island,” he said. “We then want players to also reach the mainland, be able to get to Phalen, etc.”

Naturally, Mahler was also careful not to hype things too far. “The goal was always that No Rest for the Wicked would be a bit of a forever game,” he said, adding that “quality comes first – a lot of [the discussed] areas have been blocked out in design, but getting them to shipable quality level does take some time.”

I’m quite happy with No Rest for the Wicked, myself. The game is wildly inventive in its take on the usual hack ‘n’ slash tropes, and though it’s obviously not everyone’s cup of tea based on its “Mixed” Steam review rating, I find it remarkable.

Broadly, my main concern is whether Moon Studios will be able to push No Rest for the Wicked to the finish line at a sensible enough timeline. Though the game commanded lots of attention early on due to Moon Studios’ previous Ori-based output, that appears to have fizzled out rather quickly. No Rest for the Wicked launched into Early Access specifically to build a community and include it in development discussions as it proceeds, but is the community going to stick around as the game grows into a product that’s twice or thrice its size? We’ll have to wait and see.