The rumours are true: Kingdom Come Deliverance studio Warhorse really is making a Lord of the Rings role-playing game. More specifically, it’s making an open-world Middle-earth RPG.
Warhorse announced the project on X this morning. “You might have heard the rumours,” it wrote, “it’s time to reveal what we are working on.” It then confirmed it’s developing “an open-world Middle-earth RPG” as well “a new Kingdom Come adventure”. “We’re excited to tell you more when the time is right,” it noted.
The Lord of the Rings game rumour has been swirling since late 2025, and it resurfaced again in March. It’s part of parent company Embracer’s Middle-earth push, overseen by its newly formed Fellowship Entertainment subsidiary, which a number of Embracer’s studios were recently reorganised underneath. Perhaps recent revelations Amazon is exploring a Lord of the Rings “game experience” prompted Warhorse into this formal announcement.
Exactly what shape Warhorse’s Middle-earth RPG will take, we don’t yet know, though we perhaps only have to look to Kingdom Come Deliverance for a gauge of what to expect: a large, eye-catching, simulated open-world, an eye for detail and historical realism, and a rousing story. That’s assuming Warhorse goes for a similar kind of thing, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t.
As to who will lead the project: that’s unclear. The previous Kingdom Come: Deliverance games have been helmeded by studio co-founder Daniel Vávra, who stepped away from overseeing games in order to direct a Kingdom Come Deliverance movie. Given that he co-owns the studio, however, I expect he’ll still very much be involved.
