After a week-long reprieve from the heat, the swelter is back with a vengeance this weekend, but that won’t keep me from knocking out my to-do list.
So, what’s on the agenda? Scoping out every new RPG that dropped this week. Settle in, because there’s plenty to cover: fresh launches, games hitting their full release, and demos that absolutely merit a spin.
Let’s start with something not strictly turn-based, but a title I’ve been following for a long time: Dust Raiders. Developed by Vixa Games, it’s a survival-on-wheels experience that drops you into Mad Max-style desert wastelands where exploration, combat, and trade all serve one goal: survive while pursuing revenge.
The combat isn’t turn-based; it’s real-time and grid-based, but at key moments you can trigger slow motion to plot your next move. It’s worth a look now that it’s live on PC via Steam.
Next up is a roguelite RPG with a crystal-clear challenge: gear up before the boss arrives. In He Is Coming, from Chronocle, you’ll do exactly that inside a dying realm where the Demon King’s shadow advances in three-day pulses, each heralding a randomly drawn boss that relentlessly hunts your hero.
Between night assaults, you scavenge two distinct biomes for more than 350 weapons, artifacts, and synergies, gambling precious inventory space on whether today’s counterbuild will leave you exposed to tomorrow’s terror.
Combat plays out as a tense auto‑battler: you sculpt stats and trigger chains while the action unfolds in brisk, deterministic turns. Every run unlocks fresh relics via 100‑plus meta‑challenges, and an asynchronous Kingmaker mode lets your perfected builds duel other players for the fallen crown.
Equal parts Darkest Dungeon dread and Vampire Survivors pacing, Chronocle’s Early‑Access debut already delivers 30+ bespoke bosses. Give it a try and let me know.
Next up is an isometric RPG I’ve been tracking for a long time: The Necromancer’s Tale from Psychic Software, which puts you in the shoes of a fledgling Necromancer.
Set in an alternate‑history 1733 on the Venetian frontier, the game casts you as a disgraced minor noble who must master a forbidden spellbook, court intrigue, and corpse‑raising alike while keeping suspicious townsfolk at bay.
Over a 25‑ to 50‑hour campaign built from a 400‑thousand‑word script and interactions with 180 hand‑drawn NPCs, you’ll flatter, blackmail, and seduce your way through branching quests whose Trust meter can swing between polite respect and a lynch mob.
Tactical, turn‑based skirmishes let you field undead minions alongside saber thrusts and alchemical blasts, but every ritual chips at sanity, asking whether the power to topple rivals is worth becoming a monster yourself.
Launched this week, the game’s meticulous prose and moral tightrope have already drawn praise for delivering a gothic blend of Sunless Sea’s literary dread and Divinity’s crunchy combat, challenging players to decide how much humanity they’re willing to bury with the dead.
Sticking with CRPGs, the new Smoke & Mirrors update for New Arc Line deserves a shout-out: it adds a brand-new class with its own subclass plus fresh zones, deepening this steampunk-versus-sorcery CRPG’s Early Access even further.
You can now play with a non‑human race, the dwarves, and two exclusive vocation tracks that suit their ironclad temperament: the infernal, mace‑swinging Hellfire Mage and the coal‑powered Steam Mechanic, who can eventually stomp the battlefield in a full exosuit.
The free patch also weaves a fresh questline, Step Behind the Curtain, sending you to the Sacred Tree and introducing an enigmatic ally whose importance will unfold in future chapters.
To celebrate, Fulqrum and Dreamate have launched a week‑long 20 % discount during TactiCon (before the price climbs to €24.99 / $24.99), giving newcomers a cheaper ticket into New Arc’s art‑nouveau metropolis where magic and machinery clash for the soul of society.
Here’s our preview, with extra details on this major update.
Now let’s move on to a first-person dungeon-crawler RPG, a genre I love. It’s Cyclopean: The Great Abyss, which has just launched in full after a stint in Early Access.
Developed by Schmidt Workshops, Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a compact yet unflinching monochrome CRPG/roguelike that strands an aging dreamer in the lightless depths of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands.
Its retro pedigree shows: overworld travel is top‑down and tile‑based, but descend a shaft and the view snaps to wire‑frame first‑person mazes straight out of early Ultima.
Turn‑based encounters let every foe “wait its turn” while you juggle sanity, torches, and scarce gold, deciding whether to carve, sneak, or parley, alliances with ghouls (or even cat war‑bands) can be lifesavers.
Procedurally seeded loot, rerollable English‑gentleman protagonists, and an optional permadeath mode keep runs brisk and replay‑heavy, rarely stretching past a handful of hours yet steadily revealing new lore fragments.
A love letter to ’80s dungeon crawlers, but with enough modern flair and originality to make it a must-play.
Let’s swap those monochrome palettes for something brighter and more energetic. Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson hit PC just a few days ago, and we’ve already rolled out a deep-dive review of this Ritual Studios release.
The game strings a classic turn‑based RPG around pure guitar worship: as indie hero Rob, you roam a lush pixel‑art world where rocks literally rock and percussive mushrooms keep the beat, collecting riff cards to slot into bars and unleash timed‑button crescendo attacks that feel like Paper Mario by way of Guitar Hero.
Modular bridges, strings, and pickups let you re‑tune your playstyle, from crit‑heavy shred builds to folksy life‑steal arpeggios, while you save trapped musicians and topple corporate villain Rick Riffson’s soul‑binding contracts.
The soundtrack is a who’s‑who of YouTube virtuosi (Rob Scallon, Andrew Huang, Yvette Young, Davie504 and more) and every pun‑laden biome hums with musical gags.
Another demo I want to flag is the one for that anime-style strategy game. The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily. A game that drops you into a flamboyant diesel‑fantasy coup where fugitive duchess Scarlet and ice‑cool air‑captain Lily wage asymmetric war against an empire that framed them for regicide.
Battles play out on supply‑line grids: outposts linked to HQ drip‑feed healing and buffs each turn, so the real game is carving corridors, severing the enemy’s, then flipping the board with the Stream Airship’s map‑wide powers, stalling charges, hustling reinforcements, or activating the Capture Stream to seize rival generals alive.
A brand‑new demo (prologue + Chapter 1) showcases this tug‑of‑war with voiced cut‑scenes, revised tutorials, and scalable difficulty ahead of the full release on 24 July 2025 for PC.
A few days ago, I outlined the roadmap and upcoming updates for For the King II, a game that enjoys a massive following thanks to the first title’s success. Unfortunately, its launch was far from ideal, and IronOak Games’ latest outing stirred up some discontent over bugs and missing features.
The studio hasn’t paused for a second, though. They’ve been steadily fixing issues and have published a roadmap packed with fresh content that should turn this sequel into the game it was always meant to be.
Case in point: this week marks the arrival of the brand-new Pet Shop update, which folds an extra dash of tabletop charm into Fahrul by letting adventurers befriend, rename, feed, and level a menagerie of overworld companions, then tote those furry (or scaly) sidekicks into hex‑grid battles for passive buffs and clutch attacks.
The patch also drops the risk‑reward Berserker trait (‑50 % roll slots, +20 % damage, weapons now breakable), resurrects the legendary 50‑damage hammer The Walloper, adds two strength‑based whips and a full War weapon set, and revolutionises backpacks with bulk give/sell tagging and favourite locks for smoother co‑op loot triage.
A refreshed combat timeline, smarter boss scaling, player‑name editing, and a long list of bug squashes round out the quality‑of‑life haul, making IronOak’s dice‑driven sequel a friendlier, yet still brutal, party crawl, whether you brave it solo or with three mates. All in all, I think there are plenty of good reasons to dive into this roguelite RPG now.
I went back to our preview of the survival-RPG Back to the Dawn and realized it’s been almost two years since this intriguing title first launched in Early Access.
This Escape-Sim Sandbox RPG has finally busted out of Early Access this week with its 1.0 launch, adding the long‑teased Black Panther Arc: you can now start as undercover agent Bob the Panther or stick with muck‑raking reporter Thomas the Fox, each steering a 20‑plus‑hour pixel‑art prison saga through rival gangs, 48 recruitable inmates, and 100+ hand‑crafted quests.
The full release deepens the experience with new locations, conspiracies, and multiple endings, while Day‑One parity on Xbox Series X|S (and Game Pass) lets console players join the jailbreak alongside PC adventurers.
Another standout release this week is Sunken Stones, which turns pirate plunder into a brain‑teasing duel of wits: you pick a captain, each a single vulnerable king on a 5×5 board, then spend savvy to drop oddball crewmates whose Steel, Smoke, or Salt affinities juggle knock‑backs, ammo chains, or submerged stasis to sculpt lethal combo patterns.
Victories rescue new recruits (or send expendables off the plank), but every cursed treasure chest you grab inches a doom meter upward, let it fill, and every lurking sea creep powers up, flipping the puzzle from breezy tile‑shuffling to frenetic damage control.
With roguelite runs, elemental synergies, and an ever‑tightening curse forcing ruthless roster culls, Spritewrench’s tidy debut distills deck‑builder tension into bite-size micro‑tactics worthy of any would‑be Davy Jones.
Let’s wrap up with two demo-worthy titles you should absolutely try. The first is Smash it Wild, a tactical roguelite developed by Goblinz Studio and Ernestine that pits anthropomorphic squads against each other in a sail‑punk arena where every turn is both volleyball set‑up and dodgeball smack‑down: you volley projectiles over the net to score or bean foes to stun them, chaining positional passes and character‑specific powers into stylish combo smashes.
Between bouts, you act as coach‑manager in roguelite fashion, drafting fresh animal champions, slotting synergy‑triggering gear, and deciding how to spend each rest day on training, scouting, or high‑risk side events that can tilt the next match.
One defeat wipes the run, but persistent unlocks keep expanding team archetypes, from turtle blockers that redirect serves to rabbit aces who leap sidelines for cross‑court kills. Launch is planned for Q4 2025.
Our final demo shout-out goes to Ex Sanguis, a tactical RPG from the creators of Othercide. This is a limited-time play-test that runs only during the Tacticon 2025 event, which ends on July 21, so you’ll need to jump in quickly.
Ex Sanguis drags a squad of crimson‑wielding Stillae into a world bled pale by the Purge, where manipulating a shared timeline, you speed up, delay, or outright swap initiative to chain brutal knock‑backs, flanks, and environmental eruptions that shower the monochrome battlefield in living color.
Roguelite runs through procedural arenas and branching risk‑reward maps, picking scarce resources, gambling on high‑stakes boss hunts, or regrouping for upgrades, while random skill drops force fresh load‑out synergies each loop. It’s the spiritual successor to Othercide in both style and bite.
That’s all the relevant stuff I had to report. As always, unless the heat knocks me out, I’m looking forward to your tips and suggestions. Have a good one. Ciao.
