You can now play a fan remaster in the Unreal Engine for free on Steam

It will probably be a few months before the Gothic remake from THQ Nordic appears. But if you're already keen to be sent to the mining colony on the island of Khorinis as a convict again, we might have something suitable for you.

A modder has given Gothic 1 a new technical base. Instead of Piranha Bytes' own development, the unofficial remaster now uses Unreal Engine 4, which is also no longer brand new.

We'll tell you whether switching to UE4 has any gaming advantages and how you can easily play the open beta of the modding project yourself.

There is also a video, here are around 40 minutes of commented gameplay directly from the modder for you:

Link to YouTube content

Focus on stability and performance

Let's get the cow off the ice right away before it collapses under the weight of your expectations: The fan remaster doesn't offer any innovations in terms of gameplay. So nothing changes in terms of gameplay, although that doesn't have to be bad news for fans of the first Gothic.

Then why the remaster? The modder Dmitry Kalyuzhny By porting to Unreal Engine 4, I want to ensure better performance and more stability on modern computers. The original version dates back to 2001 and could therefore cause more and more problems.

And what about the scope? There's good news here: you can already play through the fan remaster from start to finish. And who knows, thanks to the Unreal Engine foundation, there might be mods for the remaster in the future, such as higher-resolution textures and the like.

We have even successfully brought Gothic 1 into modern times ourselves:

This is how you play the fan remaster of Gothic 1 yourself

If you're already itching to read the first section, you can get started in no time. Because the fan remaster is of course free and can be easily installed via Steam.

The only catch: You must already own the original game. If you don't own Gothic 1 yet, the purchase shouldn't put too much of a dent in your wallet.

Then navigate to your Steam library, right-click on Gothic 1 and select the context menu entry Characteristics.

In the window that now opens, switch to the tab Betas. Give in the field Private betas then enter the access code TheColonyisNotUnreal and you can download the open beta.

Finally, a few words about the future of the Gothic series: Micha is sure that the brand will survive despite Piranha Bytes' difficulties. Meanwhile, fans are bothered by the new look of a monster in the remake. You also recently voted for your favorite – you can find out the result above.

Will you take a closer look at the fan remaster in Unreal Engine 4 or would you rather stick with the original despite the outdated technology? Feel free to write it to us in the comments section!