
Ashfall Requiem
80 hours of branching morality that mostly earns its runtime.
Now Boarding · Est. 2019
Reviews, deep-dive guides and lore expeditions across RPGs, roguelikes and indie darlings — filed on a fixed timetable from Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
640+
Titles logged
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Fixed departures
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Sponsored scores
The Flight Crew
ArcaneBattleExpedition began in a share-house off Ann Street in the Valley, back when the only way to trust a review was to finish the game first. We still do. Every piece ships on a schedule, credit rolls and all.
Three writers, one editor, no publisher junkets. We buy most of what we cover, disclose anything we don't, and keep our scoring rubric public so you always know what a 7 actually means to us.
Independent
Reader-funded, ad-light
Finished
We roll credits first
On time
Twice-weekly filings
The Flight Plan
No hot takes on launch night. Every article passes four checkpoints before it ever boards the schedule.
We buy or request the game, log the build version, and set a completion target before writing a single word.
Minimum 15 hours or full credits, whichever is longer. Notes, clips and bug reports go into a shared logbook.
A second writer verifies the score against our public rubric and flags anything that reads like marketing.
Edited, fact-checked and scheduled for the next Tuesday or Friday slot, with disclosures printed up top.
The Logbook

80 hours of branching morality that mostly earns its runtime.

A 12-run seed guide to surviving the third-floor gauntlet.

A six-hour narrative gem built by two people in Meanjin.

Revisiting a 2004 tactics classic that still out-thinks 2024.
From the Cabin
"The only outlet I trust to actually finish a JRPG before scoring it. Their Ashfall Requiem breakdown saved me 80 hours on a game I'd have bounced off."
Timetable Notes
We score out of 10 against a published rubric covering design, feel, performance and value. A 7 means genuinely good and worth your time — not a failing grade. The full rubric lives on our About page and hasn't changed since 2021.
Never. We buy most games ourselves and clearly label any review code or preview access at the top of the article. No score has ever been sponsored, and it never will be. Reader memberships keep the lights on instead.
Membership is AUD $6/month or $60/year. You get early access to reviews the evening before publish, an ad-free reading mode, and a monthly members-only long-read. Cancel anytime from your account page — no lock-in.
Yes — we run one guest expedition a month, paid at AUD $250 per accepted piece. Send a two-paragraph pitch through the contact form below with the tag "Pitch". We reply to every submission within two weeks, even the ones we pass on.
Flight Desk
Pitches, corrections, membership questions or just a good game recommendation — the desk is open.