Every Thursday, some game developer on Twitter takes their turn creating a thread and encouraging turn based RPG developers to promote their game. These are often games of passion, many done by single developers working on their project while holding down a full time job and every other challenge life brings.
This link here should bring up some interesting games to play or at least keep an eye on.
I’m going to point out some of the ones I’ve some experience with.
Those Who Rule is a strategy tactics game being developed by a single developer. The developer is quite active in the community and the game definitely looks like it’s going to become something special. The tutorial and first chapter are currently live on Steam.
Terra Randoma is an open world roguelike with quests, deadly dungeons, a nice power curve, and a funky design where you and the mobs all look like 3D minis and the game board looks like something you would love to play a really fine game of Dungeons & Dragons on. Terra Randoma has been out on Steam for over a year now, and more content is being added all the time.
Unexplored 2 is a roguelite with a unique aesthetic, very different from your run of the mill fantasy RPG, while still staying close enough to the roguelike meta to satisfy traditional turn based gamers. It’s really something new. You’ll die, and often, but you’ll be able to pass on some gear and knowledge to the Wayfarer who follows you. The game doesn’t restart when you die, and your successor will find the darkness has grown during the transfer from one to the next.
I bought this on the EPIC store, but it’s now available on Steam as well.
Mahenkoshi: I haven’t played this yet. I did see this on Splattercat’s channel awhile back, and was intrigued by its take on turn-based samurai battles. It plays cool games with size that reminds me of the old Might and Magic games, and it uses hex tiles, so what’s not to like? It is scheduled to come to Steam sometime next year.
We’re truly in an isometric strategy tactics game golden age. Tactics Ogre Reborn coming out, so many new games in a once-dead genre in development or having come out, but Arcadian Atlas seems to come closest toward nailing the Final Fantasy Tactics aesthetic, plot and gameplay. This one went immediately onto my Steam wishlist — should be out sometime next summer.
Pawnbarian continues to push the limits of the chess-based heroic fantasy RPG genre. You draft chess pieces that grant your playing piece chess-like movements and attacks. In between levels, you visit a store that lets you upgrade pieces or buy new pieces to better support the character class you’ve chosen. I’m not sure every level is a winnable level, but I’ve usually been able to work my way through if I give it enough thought. Pawnbarian is currently available on Steam.
There’s dozens more games listed in this link — check out their games, follow the devs, wishlist the games on Steam, show them some love. These are all games developed with passion and it shows through in every pixel.
Banner image was generated by DALL-E 2 and does not represent any particular game. The prompt was characters from final fantasy tactics, tactics ogre, and octopath traveler fight a huge boss together on 3D tactical terrain.
