Developers have announced The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, the first builder survival game set in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings universe.

There is no shortage of builders’ survival games for players to dive into. The Norse-inspired Valheim is one of the more prominent titles, alongside games such as Rust, Ark: Survival Evolved and the early access V Rising. Fans will soon be able to add another game to this list with the upcoming release of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.

Developer Free Range Games has also released a gameplay trailer for The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria on June 10. The first survival and building game set in the Lord of the Rings universe will take players deep into the mines when the title arrives on PC next spring.

Lord of the Rings fans may remember Moria as the abandoned dwarf city home to the Balrog from the first film in the trilogy. However, the trailer suggests that the dwarves will be recalled to the ancient, underground kingdom. Players can join a team of eight dwarven explorers to delve into the underground realm of Khazad-dűm, scouring crumbling mines and ruins for lost treasures and forgotten riches. In the trailer, player-led teams of dwarves both mine and build as they battle the forces of darkness that infest the halls of Moria.

Judging by the trailer, Return to Moria certainly looks to be a big game. Moria offers an impressive amount of open space for an underground city, and showcases some truly beautiful locations. Return to Moria also boasts a procedurally generated world, which in theory guarantees endless replayability.

While the Return to Moria trailer shows examples of the basic mechanics of the game, the developers go into more detail on the Return to Moria website. As you’d expect from a build-it-yourself survival game, players will spend most of their time gathering resources and turning them into something useful. But mining ore, forging weapons, tools and armour, and building bases all make noise. The more noise players make, the more attention they get from the sinister Shadow, which once drove the dwarves from their homes. To quote the developers, “where there’s noise, there’s fighting”. Players must plan and prepare well to repel the forces opposing the return of the dwarves.

The developers also claim that Return to Moria will have plenty of goodies in store for Lord of the Rings fans. Players will weave the story of the series into the world of the game as they rebuild Moria and unravel its secrets. Hopefully The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria will deliver on the developer’s big promises.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria will be released for PC in Spring 2023.