When the team that are best known for taking over the helm of Minecraft announce that they’re working on a new sandbox, exploration game, people would be right to sit up and listen. That’s Reforj, and even this early in its own journey, it’s looking really positive.
In 2026 it’s impossible to talk about 4J Studios without mentioning Minecraft, and that’s likely to only be even further cemented with the appearance of Reforj. While the studio certainly aren’t entirely ‘typecast’ into creating open-world sandbox games (they did, after all, create the rather natty Manic Mechanics) they’ve leaned into it more here, and – in my opinion – that’s to a real advantage here.
The reason for that is because while a lot of people play the renowned sandbox game, there’s definitely a wide variety of playstyles. I, for one, enjoy exploration much more than I do building snakes of machinery or eloquent homes; You’re more likely to find me potholing or scaling a mountain than you are me enchanting anything, for instance. Reforj, then, is an incredibly exciting proposition for me.
It promises exotic creatures, a story of a lost civilization and the opportunity to explore and settle distant, dangerous new areas as you push further and further into its world, and while I’m sure that a lot of people will, ultimately, put down roots somewhere, the marketing material definitely pitches something where you can truly explore and get lost. More of a No Man’s Sky than a Minecraft, if you will.
While at New Game Plus, earlier in the year, I sat down with Reforj to try to get a feel for it. As you can probably guess from everything that I’ve written to this point, I was pulled in by it. Although, I do have to admit that it started off feeling a lot more like a PVP survival game, with an atmosphere that felt closer to games like Valheim or Ark than what I had expected. Once that feeling passed, I was quite happy with the simplicity and technology level (almost instantly refining) that the build started with, and actively started seeking out the highest cliffs and deepest holes to test out my glider.
Reforj is currently in development for PC, as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles. You can sign up as a beta tester on its website.
