Sphere Studios' Gridlords Enters Steam Early Access With Asynchronous Castle PvP

French publisher Goblinz Publishing and developer Sphere Studios released Gridlords into Steam Early Access on October 7, bringing a castle-building autobattler that skips live multiplayer sessions entirely in favor of asynchronous PvP. Instead of queuing for a real-time match, players submit a fortified base and a hero, then let the game simulate the fight against another player's setup whenever both sides are ready.

A Strategy Game Without a Clock

Gridlords casts players as rival lords who grow a castle from a handful of starter buildings into a sprawling defensive structure. Each run starts with picking a race and a hero, both of which shape available unit types and passive bonuses. From there, the loop is familiar to anyone who has played a base-builder: place rooms, slot in units, and balance offense against defense as resources allow.

What sets it apart is the asynchronous PvP layer. Rather than matching two players into a live session, Gridlords runs battles through its auto-battler system once a challenge is issued — the outcome is determined by how well each castle was designed, not by who reacts faster in the moment. Goblinz Publishing's Early Access announcement frames it as a game where players "deploy your forces and let the auto-battler system determine the victor," with ranked matches intended to separate stronger castle designs from weaker ones over time.

What's Actually in the Early Access Build

The developers lay out the current state of the game plainly in Gridlords' Steam Early Access FAQ: the core loop is functional, one race is fully playable, and online asynchronous matchmaking works for casual games, with what they describe as minimal placeholder art remaining. The Early Access announcement adds specifics on top of that baseline — structure and item merging to create tiered upgrades, 22 new items, a new playable Lord and matching abilities, animations across all structures and units, and a reworked sound and music pass.

It's a deliberately narrow slice rather than a full release dressed up as Early Access. The developers describe the test period's purpose directly: to "test and refine building phase feeling, unit synergies and asynchronous PvP matchmaking with real players," with changes to the meta and interface expected before the game leaves Early Access.

A Launch Date Set Back in September

Goblinz Publishing locked in the October 7 date publicly two weeks ahead of release, posting on its official X account on September 24 that the "strategic async-PvP autobattler set in a fantasy pixel-art world" would open to the public that day. Gridlords itself had already been visible for months before that: Goblinz's channel put out a reveal trailer back in March introducing the async-combat hook, and the game ran a public playtest build ahead of this week's launch to gather feedback on its building and matchmaking systems.

Who's Behind the Castle Walls

Goblinz Publishing is a French studio founded in 2016 that has grown into a boutique publisher of strategy and simulation titles, with a back catalog that includes Legend of Keepers, Hero's Hour and Terraformers alongside games it develops in-house. Gridlords is one of the newer titles it has signed under that publishing arm rather than built internally, with Sphere Studios credited as the developer on both the Steam store page and Goblinz's own listing for the game. Sphere Studios hasn't put out an independent press kit or studio site of its own, so for now Gridlords is best known through its publisher's channels rather than the small team actually building it.

What Comes After Early Access

Goblinz and Sphere Studios are targeting a full release in the first half of 2027, with the Early Access period used to expand the game well beyond its current one-race, one-mode slice. The roadmap calls for more playable races, a larger hero roster, a proper ranked ladder, and additional building types layered on top of the current structure, with pricing expected to rise once the game leaves Early Access and the feature set is locked in. For a studio launching into a crowded autobattler market without the backing of a big-name IP, that slow-build approach — small test group first, full roster and ranked play later — is as much a bet on community feedback as it is on the genre itself.

📆 Gridlords is coming to Early Access on October 7th! Get ready to embark on this strategic async-PvP autobattler set in a fantasy pixel-art world! ⚔️ Wishlist now 👇 https://t.co/anA2DgxIDl #pixelart #gamedev #indiegame #fantasy #steam

— Goblinz Publishing (@GoblinzPub), September 24, 2026 on X