Return to Moria has taken me by surprise. Here is a game about being a Dwarf in the Fourth Age, summoned by Gimli himself to take back Moria from the orcs and the Dark. You aren’t saving the world. You’re reclaiming a homeland, one pickaxe swing at a time.

Twenty-plus hours into the game, the first thing I thought about the game was: “I’ve never heard of this game”. I saw the gameplay and all I know is that I wanted to try it. It hit all the right swings: looks cozy, very chill with some mid action, and I could construct my own little cozy home within the mines of Moria.

Under the Mountain, No Two Trips Are the Same

Return to Moria is built on procedurally generated realms. Khazad-dûm reshuffles every run: a maze of tunnels, chambers, and collapsed stairways threaded around three legendary mountains. You start by mining iron and carving out a base. Then you refine ore, craft better tools, and push deeper, chasing gold, quartz, gemstones, and eventually the real prize, mithril. The loop is familiar to anyone who has played Valheim or Subnautica, and it’s got its hooks in me. IGN’s review spotted the same pull, calling the rhythm of gathering better resources to feed a growing base genuinely enjoyable.

The Dark

The survival systems are the reason Moria works, because they’re all pointed at one thing: making the darkness feel real. You manage hunger, sleep, body temperature, willpower, and noise. Step away from your torch line and the cold creeps in. You learn to treat light as a resource and a promise, spiking torches along the tunnels so you can always find your way back to the hearth.

Mining is loud, and sound carries in the deep. Every pickaxe swing is a dinner bell for whatever lives further down, so you can fight goblins, orcs, cave trolls, and drakes head-on, or you can hold still, stay quiet, and let them pass. Food is more than a meter, too. You cook at your base, at a proper hearth and table, and what you eat changes depending on the time of day. It all feeds the fantasy of being a stubborn, practical Dwarf running a desperate expedition on leftovers and spite.

Okay, the Jank. Let’s Talk.

I’ll say it plainly: I love jank in general, and Return to Moria tests that love. At launch it landed with mixed reviews, and the critics were not wrong. Metacritic has it at 59 on both PC and PS5. IGN gave it 4/10 for dull combat and constraining building. PC Gamer scored it 58. Eurogamer, while adoring the atmosphere, flagged basic combat, finicky building, and bugs. There were performance problems at launch, and the building system frustrated people who wanted a true sandbox.

But here’s the part that makes me glad I didn’t just read the launch reviews: the game got a second life. Two years of consistent updates reshaped it. The Golden Update in August 2024 brought full cross-play, a Sandbox Mode, building improvements, ambient music, and new weapons and armor, and it carried the game onto Xbox and Steam. Then in November 2025 came Durin’s Folk, the first major expansion: more than twenty hours of new content, an end-game story chapter, NPCs you rescue and recruit as blacksmiths, miners, brewmasters, and guards, massive Monuments to rebuild, and infinitely repeatable co-op expeditions through randomized dungeons. All in all, it’s been an amazing experience so far.