Let me show you some of the most promising TRPGs for 2025 and 2026
Today, I carved out some time to put together a list of 20 of the most intriguing tactical RPGs currently in development. Some are right around the corner, others are a bit further off, and a few still don’t have a solid release date.
Either way, it’s clear this is one of our favorite genres—titles with tactical combat, grid-based or otherwise, whether nestled in narrative-driven isometric RPGs or wrapped in roguelite frameworks.
Tactical RPGs are a wonderful challenge. Not only do you need to develop the stats and equipment of characters, devising the best builds for each encounter or creating specialized roles, but you also need to take positioning and timing into account.
There are plenty of big-name examples out there. Baldur’s Gate 3 is technically a tactical RPG, but there are also a ton of indie titles on the horizon that you may not have heard of. Let’s take a look at 20 upcoming TRPGs that are worth keeping an eye on.
If you liked The Last Spell, then my first recommendation goes to dark fantasy roguelite Blightstone. Rather than defending a single city, you must escort a fragile crystal across blighted lands, changing your tactics with the terrain and weather to survive.
Blightstone uses a gridless map that encourages laying traps and using environmental effects to give yourself an edge. Like any good roguelite, you can expect to die a lot at first, but learn with each failed run while gaining new skills to help you out the next time. Give the demo a try while you wait for it to launch later this year!
If you’d rather follow a story straight through to the end in one go, but still want that grim dark fantasy feel, Fight Life: Vanguard follows the tale of four raw recruits who become legendary heroes. Guided by a fallen god betrayed by his acolyte, the party fights their way across a war-torn world on hex-grid maps, hoping to save the world.
Fight Life has a heavy focus on developing your characters into a fighting force worthy of legend, so it has some serious potential for replay value. It’s expected to launch in early 2026, so there’s plenty of time to try the demo.
For something a little different from the usual TRPG fare, Never’s End blends undead, apocalyptic fantasy horror with a chibi anime aesthetic for a strangely compelling effect. In this RPG I introduced last month, tasked with defending the last human village in the face of the Never, your spirit will possess the villagers, granting them extraordinary powers as you do whatever it takes to survive and rebuild.
Never’s End tracks battlefield conditions like temperature and wind, and many of your powers will center around manipulating those. Reshaping the battlefield is just as important as controlling it. No release date has been announced yet, so be sure to follow the game for future updates.
Of course, you can always trade in your swords and spells for guns and grenades with Critical Shift. In this tactical horror RPG, you’ll lead a squad of elite soldiers into the depths of ICE-1 station, uncovering the secrets of the terrible research that was done there.
Critical Shift places an emphasis on resource management, making even things like ammo scarce and valuable. That, combined with its overall mood, almost makes it feel like an early survival horror game blended with XCOM – not a bad combination, if you ask me! There is no official release date yet, but players can request playtest access via Critical Shift‘s Steam page.
Speaking of genre-blending, Fangs & Forges has a lot going for it that makes it worth checking out. Imagine an open-world sandbox with an in-depth story, where each battle is fast-paced and feels more like a board game than a tactical slog.
Mix in the fact that every one of the 120 recruitable characters has their own lore, build, and hand-drawn art, and you can see that this game is a real labor of love by Alpenwolf Studio.
The game has a way to go, with Early Access probably coming sometime in 2026, but the demo has been very positively received. Fangs & Forges could be one to watch.
While we’re looking ahead, of course, it’s important to pay tribute to the classics. The impending Heroes Of Might And Magic: Olden Era, potentially in a return to the glory days of the series’ legendary third installment, is certainly cause for celebration among retro strategy gamers. The fact that it’s now being published by Hooded Horse, is even better news.
The game might be new, but from everything we’ve seen Olden Era looks like our beloved Heroes, made fresh and new for 2025. It’s expected to enter Early Access later this year, and we can’t wait.
Then again, maybe you’d rather keep your battles in one place for now; Bloodgrounds carries the proud tradition of tactical gladiator sims with eye-catching, high-pixel visuals.
As you manage your recruits and train them to earn glory and gold in the arena, you’ll have to contend not just with human gladiators but also all sorts of mythical beasts and their strange powers.
Bloodgrounds also challenges you to manage your estate, investing the wealth you gain from arena battles to enhance your prestige and training facilities. The full game is coming later this year, but you can try the demo right now.
Turn-based games don’t always incorporate action or timing gameplay, but as we saw earlier this year with Clair Obscur, it can certainly work when they do! Lord of Ogre adds precision inputs to the iconic, side-view duels of Fire Emblem and its derivatives, adding a new layer to the challenging grid-based genre.
Lord of Ogre uses single-button, timed presses to enhance attacks and defenses, making it crucial that you pay attention to the game’s lovely pixel animations just as much as you do the position of your troops on the field. It’s listed as “coming soon,” and if you like old-school TRPGs it’s certainly worth looking into.
There are plenty of RPGs about winning a hopeless war against all odds, but in Singing They Pass, the war is already lost. As the commander of a group of soldiers called the Sparrows, all that’s left is for you to get as many of them home as you can, as the enemy closes in from all sides.
Of course, battles aren’t the only thing that can claim the lives of your beleaguered troops. Starvation and disease are also dangers that you’ll find along the road, and you’re almost sure to reach the end of the road with fewer soldiers than you started with.
Singing They Pass is sure to be a game that forces some tough decisions, and you can try the demo right now.
When it comes to decision-making, though, it’s hard to beat the vast array of options that you get on the tabletop. Solasta is staking its claim as a proper series, with its first sequel launching at a yet-to-be-announced date, offering even more story choices mixed with tactical battles than the original.
As you may remember, Solasta: Crown Of The Magister brought the 5e rules to life in commanding fashion. Solasta II looks like it will improve on the formula, bringing the story to the new land of Neokos. Remember, though, whatever your choices, in the demo or the full game, it can all come down to a die roll.
Don’t worry, anime fans, there’s plenty of tactical goodness for you to look forward to as well, starting with Super Robot Wars Y.
This long-running Bandai series is the ultimate mecha crossover, bringing mechs and their pilots from famous anime like Gundam, Macross, Code Geass, and more to meet on the battlefield.
Grid-based battles interspersed with stylish clashes have kept the series going for a long time, and this newest installment is coming on 27 August.
Of course, no discussion of upcoming TRPGs would be complete without discussing the lion in the room; Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the most beloved games the genre has ever seen, is getting a remake called The Ivalice Chronicles.
The tale of Ramza’s idealism and Delita’s ambition is being resurrected with voiceover, quality-of-life improvements, and visuals that retain the original’s classic look while being wonderfully polished for modern hardware. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is one fans won’t want to miss when it launches on 30 September.
If you were always more of a Persona fan than Final Fantasy, Demonschool could help satisfy your tactical itch. As demon hunter Faye, you’ll navigate the pressures of university life, building relationships with your friends and attending classes, while doing battle with the forces of darkness at the same time.
This stylish, long-awaited RPG is expected to land later this year. If you can’t wait (like me), there’s always the demo, which is available to try right now.
For a high-concept challenge, it’s hard to find a cooler idea than Paraside: Duality Unbound. When another dimension intersects with our own, it’s up to you to defend humanity from interplanar invaders.
The trick is that combat maps are double-sided, with different terrain and elements in each dimension, but characters act at the same time in both. Hence, one side of the board can, directly or indirectly, affect the other, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
No doubt, the only way to truly understand Paraside will be to play it, so be sure to follow it to get updated when the release date is eventually announced.
If you’re looking for something a little more traditional, there’s another game I’ve been following for a long time, and it’s Tactics Returners, a love letter to classic isometric TRPGs, like the aforementioned Final Fantasy Tactics.
Not only does it have a massive character customization system with over 40 Jobs, but it also includes a focus on character storylines and relationships, so your team is more than just numbers with a name.
The modern graphics and gameplay make Tactics Returners look like it will be much more than just another ode to a bygone era. It has the makings of a sleek, stylish TRPG able to stand on its own two feet, so it’s definitely one to keep an eye on.
If you know someone who thinks turn-based games can’t be tense, pulse-pounding affairs, try showing them the demo for Nightmare Frontier. Billed as a “tactical extraction looter,” this game is less about territorial control or defeating all the enemies on the map.
Instead, you need to get in, get as much loot as you can, and get out before being overwhelmed by the Dreadweavers.
Nightmare Frontier asks you to take risks; do you push for the extra loot, risking your team, or play it safe and forfeit the resources? It’s currently in Early Access, with a roadmap planned out to early next year, so if you like the game’s concept, there’s more on the way.
It’s exciting to see what challenges a procedurally generated world can come up with for us, but they don’t always offer the consistency and depth of a fully handcrafted world. Lair Of The Leviathan boasts a completely open world, built from the ground up to be explored however you like.
While many games claim to be designed so that you can play them your way, Lair Of The Leviathan really means it. Full party customization and freedom to approach the game on your terms mean that once you start a new game, the whole thing is in your hands. A release date hasn’t been announced yet, but if that sounds like your cup of tea, be sure to give the game a follow.
If you want just a bit more guidance, but still plenty of freedom, The Necromancer’s Tale is a sprawling RPG about harnessing forbidden powers in 18th-century Europe. You’ll keep your identity a secret as you manage relationships and determine who to trust, before eventually revealing your undead legions to overwhelm your enemies.
Best of all, there’s not long to wait for The Necromancer’s Tale. Not only is there a free demo right now, but the game itself launches on 17 July.
Let’s get back to something purely tactical, straight-up Final Fantasy Tactics style. Enter the stylish, Darkest Dungeon-esque Prelude Dark Pain. I took it for a spin about a month ago and can vouch for its rock-solid battle system, fast-paced, engaging, and fun. The narrative also looks intriguing and refreshingly mature.
What I’m itching to see now is everything beyond that slice: how progression works, how quests are structured, the side activities that promise deeper lore and richer character backstories, and, last but not least, the base-management mechanics.
None of these were in the demo I played, but they have me seriously pumped. All told, this is one of the RPGs I’m most eager to keep on my radar. I apologize, but I don’t have a release date to share at this time.
Finally, Revenge Of The Firstborn is another reimagining of the tabletop experience, like Solasta. However, where Solasta uses the 5e rules, Revenge Of The Firstborn uses 3.5. If you were a fan of D&D in the early 2000s, or stuck with Pathfinder later on, this could be a great game for you.
With over 120 monsters to battle against, you’ll need to carefully construct your six-person party if you want to overcome the odds. 3.5 had more than its share of challenging encounters, so why not take advantage of the fact that there’s no official release date yet and brush up on the old rules?
That wraps up my list. There are still plenty of titles that didn’t make the cut, but bit by bit, I plan to give each of them their time in the spotlight. Let me know what you think. Wishing you the best. Ciao
