Startup profile: Loric Games
- Founded by: Brian Johnson, Rob Denton, Colin Shannon, Ray Soto
- Year founded: 2022
- Headquarters: City, ST
- Sector: Video game development
- Funding and valuation: $6 million in venture capital; valuation undisclosed
- Key ecosystem partners: George Mason University, New Dominion Angels
A new survival video game developed in a Northern Virginia studio has drawn thousands of players to its early access release, who are offering feedback that’s continuously shaping it.
Loric Games in Arlington debuted its first title, Echoes of Elyusium, earlier this year. Players build airships to travel through a mythical world to fight villains and solve mysteries as to what evil has taken place in the skies of Elyusium, either solo or with up to six friends.
“To see such a strong community that loves our game … it’s been great to have them almost be a part of the development team.”
Ray Soto, Loric Games
The game, available for $19.99 on Steam, has been in development for two years before the release in late January, per cofounder and executive producer Ray Soto. For the first couple of months, Loric Games has done 18 “patches” (updates like bug fixes and small content additions), mostly thanks to user feedback on a 3,000-member Discord and online reviews.
“To see such a strong community that loves our game, and they see that we love our game as well, it’s been great to essentially have them almost be a part of the development team,” Soto told Technical.ly. “They’re such an important piece of this for us.”
This release comes as the gaming industry has been struggling in recent years, with one third of workers being laid off in the past two years. But in addition to Loric Games, developers are starting their own studios in the DC region to buck the trend.
Learning from a ‘rough’ launch
Echoes of Elyusium players can expect more content updates and expansions in 2026, per Soto. That includes new materials to build the airships and new enemies to defeat in the roughly 20-hour-long game.
Loric worked with the mega international publisher Snail for the release, but the startup owns the game and its IP. Snail’s role is mostly marketing and funding support, according to cofounder and CEO Brian Johnson.
He was honest that the release was a bit bumpy.
One obstacle has been that early access has varying meanings, Johnson said. More established studios’ versions are typically more polished than indie studios’ pre-releases. That then can create confusion for players, and set bars incredibly high — which happened with this release, he said.
Because of that reality, he and the team are considering other ways to introduce future games, including a much earlier version for less money, or only releasing a nearly-done product.
“The problem now is, for any developers who are truly trying to use early access to be what it needs to be, we can’t,” Johnson said. “That means we have to bring a completely finished game to the market. And if we could do that, we wouldn’t use early access. It’s a catch-22.”
Reviews of the game are mixed on Steam, calling out early bugs and glitches. But several accounts noted how quickly Loric Games is responding to concerns.
“The team is actually the biggest star here,” user TheKrakken88 wrote. “After seeing the love and devotion to game and community Loric has, I will always be interested in whatever they do.”
“It was a pretty rough launch,” Johnson said. “However, it was through the dedication of the team and the listening to our community … they were able to take a game that launched pretty rocky, to a place where we are now.”
Already brainstorming ideas for the future
Work in the immediate future will be focused on this first release, but the cofounders said they plan to release three more games related to Echoes of Elyusium with a similar 20-hour estimated time to defeat the game.
For the second iteration, players will work on healing villains instead of killing them, Johnson said. He declined to share further information about future games. Loric Games will likely work with a publisher again for the next two releases, but hopes to self-publish for the fourth game.
Ten full-time employees work at the startup, and there are no plans to dramatically scale staff, he said. At most, the staff count will be 30, to ensure more collaboration and synced ideas.
While keeping the worker count small, Johnson isn’t and doesn’t plan to use AI often — mainly for fixing bugs and complicated code issues as of now.
“We will continue to explore adoption of AI through development,” Johnson said, “but we probably will never touch it for narrative or art.”
