The Shattering of Arqenuvam · Game
Silent Years
The Shattering of Arqenuvam: Silent Years
A peaceful fantasy life-sim set across the Silent Years of Arqenuvam.
In developmentComing to SteamCycle II · Edict 3400
About Silent Years
A quieter life inside Arqenuvam
Silent Years is a peaceful fantasy life-sim about inhabiting Arqenuvam rather than standing outside it. Its focus is ordinary life in an extraordinary world, set during the quieter years between world-changing conflicts.
Play your way
Solo or in two-player co-op
Settle into Arqenuvam at your own pace, or share the same world with one other player. Co-op is another way to inhabit the world together while keeping the game's peaceful life-sim focus.
A life in Arqenuvam
More than one way to belong
Build a life through the routines, choices and places that make the Silent Years feel inhabited rather than observed from a distance.
Live Your Life
Build a daily rhythm around home, rest, wellbeing and the routines of ordinary life inside an extraordinary world.
Choose Your Place in Arqenuvam
Choose from eight playable peoples and nine starting cities, with identity shaping traits, lifespan, magic access and where your story can begin.
Work & Trade
Take jobs and contracts, earn and exchange local currencies, trade through city economies and build a place in communities with distinct costs and opportunities.
Gather, Craft & Build
Gather resources, craft useful goods, cook, work with tools and materials, and shape the spaces you call home.
Travel Through Living Cities
Move between distinctive communities with their own economies, services, rules, resources and recurring local events.
Grow Through Skills & Magic
Develop skills and traits, train through institutions and follow lineage-shaped paths into practical magic where your character can access it.
Eight playable peoples
Choose who begins the story
Your choice shapes traits, lifespan, magic access, starting-city eligibility and the rhythm of the opening years.
Human
A flexible non-magical beginning, with a rare later path toward First Tier magic.
Magician
Begins with First Tier magic and broad access to practical magical branches.
Gigant
A non-magical life with the distinctive isolated start of Goliath's Stand.
Dwarf
Non-magical, with a natural fit for craft, tools, industry and trade.
Elf
Begins with First Tier magic, with rare higher progression available later.
Orc
A non-magical beginning with starts centred on Grolmar or Aetheria's Misery district.
Dragonkin
Begins with a powerful Second Tier lineage and a Draconia-only start.
Aerie Folk
Begins with First Tier magic, especially Aeromancy, and starts in Skyreach.
Nine starting cities
A different beginning in every city
Economy, cost of living, resources, services, local rules and species eligibility all change the shape of a start. Aetheria goes further, offering two sharply different openings within the same city.
Aethelheart
A stable forest-and-farm start for eligible peoples, with a gentler opening rhythm.
Aetheria
Radiant & MiseryOne city, two sharply different starts: Radiant is wealthy and costly; Misery is cheaper, rougher and more constrained.
Arcanum
An arcane centre with a strong magic-and-research identity and higher living costs.
Draconia
An ore-focused Dragonkin start shaped by a specialised local economy.
Goliath's Stand
An isolated, rule-bound Gigant start built around a very different local rhythm.
Grolmar
A low-cost industrial start with salvage strength and weaker farm-and-forest access.
Havenstone
A balanced all-round opening with flexible resources and a broad everyday-life rhythm.
Khazad-Dur
A mining, quarrying and engineering-focused start with a strong craft identity.
Skyreach
A high-cost Aerie Folk start shaped by elevation, transit and mining.
Generational continuity
Your life may end. The world continues.
A character can eventually die, but the world does not have to end with them. Continue in the same world with a new adult character while the broader history and progress you shaped remain part of what comes next.
Gameplay
Gameplay previews
Official gameplay images will be added as development progresses.
Gameplay coming soon
Everyday city life
Daily routines, living communities, markets, and the rhythm of life across Arqenuvam.
Gameplay coming soon
Character & beginning
Character and species creation, traits, lifespans, and beginning of life in your chosen starting city.
Gameplay coming soon
Work, home & craft
Work, trade contracts, crafting, cooking, furnishing, home building, and skill progression.
In developmentOfficial gameplay previews will be added as development progresses.
When it takes place
Before the main novel storyline
Silent Years begins at Cycle II · Edict 3400. The main novel storyline begins later, at Cycle II · Edict 3601. The game inhabits the quieter years between those points rather than presenting the later crisis as its starting premise.
BeginningCycle II · Edict 3400EraThe Silent Years
Across the Living Archive
One life inside a much longer history
Silent Years belongs to the same chronology, magic and published world as the rest of Arqenuvam. These paths add context without turning the game page into an index of the entire archive.
Chronology
See the Silent Years in the Timeline
Place Cycle II · Edict 3400 within the wider chronology of reconstruction, memory and the years that follow.
Open the TimelineThe fiction
Continue into the books
Follow Arqenuvam into the later story era through its completed books, without treating the game as an adaptation of the novels.
Browse the booksMagic
Understand the Five Tiers
Read the larger magical framework behind everyday Nature’s Craft and the rarer powers that exist elsewhere in Arqenuvam.
Explore the Five TiersDevelopment
In development · Coming to Steam
Most core gameplay systems are already established, while substantial work remains on interface and usability refinement, character presentation, music and audio, final visual assets, balancing, testing and release-quality polish.
The preferred target is for both Arqenuvam games to release in Q2 2027. If the releases are staggered, one is currently planned around Q1 2027 and the other around Q3 2027; the order remains open. These are development targets, not confirmed release dates. The official Silent Years Steam page will be linked here when it becomes available.
Steam
Steam page coming soon
The official Silent Years Steam page will be linked here when it becomes available.
StatusMajor refinementSteamComing to Steam
Creator
About the creator
Silent Years grew from H.J. Arcanum's desire to build an Arqenuvam that could be inhabited, not merely observed — a place where ordinary routines, work, travel and quiet choices can carry stories of their own.
Discover the sibling game
The Shattering of Arqenuvam: Farfound
A peaceful fantasy village-building game about growing one shared settlement around Cycle II · Edict 2200, alone or in two-player co-op.
Explore FarfoundContinue browsing
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