It’s Saturday, which means it’s time to check out all the new RPGs and strategy games that have launched over the past few days. I’ll give you a heads-up right away: in terms of actual new releases, I only have a couple of small things to point out, because this article is largely dominated by demos.
That said, those two releases include a genuinely intriguing brand-new cRPG from the creators of Atom, something longtime players may remember for its strong Fallout-inspired vibe, as well as a brand-new DLC for a stylish strategy title that debuted in 2024.
Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy
- Developers: AtomTeam
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Out of Early Access on December 16, 2025
- Steam Page
I’ll start right away with one of the brand-new releases from the past few days: Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy, a party-based, isometric fantasy cRPG from AtomTeam that wears its Infinity Engine influences (Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale) on its sleeve, dropping the player into the barely explored land of Nova Drakonia after a voyage goes sideways and a dying stranger hands over an unusual artifact that drags the party into a world-level conspiracy.
Combat supports both turn-based play and real-time with pause, so fights can run like classic RTwP skirmishes or slower, more deliberate tactical encounters depending on how you want to manage positioning and ability timing.
Character building is classless, with stats shaping dialogue options and alternate quest solutions, which means the same objective can play out through different checks, approaches, and party setups.
The campaign leans into nonlinear exploration, villages, hidden temples, crypts, and dungeons, backed by multi-solution quests and NPC-driven hooks, and it’s available on PC with Windows, macOS, and Linux/SteamOS support, having left Early Access (December 11, 2024) for a full Steam release on December 16, 2025.
Dead Weight Prologue
- Developers: Klukva Games
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Full Game Expected For Q1 2026
- Steam Page
Another interesting title I’ve been following for a long time is Dead Weight, which made its debut this week with a Prologue version, which is a free standalone slice of Klukva Games’ turn-based tactical roguelite, and it sets up the opening beats by putting you in control of Arn, a barbarian who starts brushing up against the game’s “Ancient Gods” powers early on.
The prologue focuses on the first region, with runs built around tactical fights against goblins and a heavy emphasis on positioning. Bad steps can get you killed, and you can also shove enemies into the Abyss when the map gives you edges to work with.
Between encounters, progression comes from building out a loadout and skill setup (the page calls out 20+ character skills and items) while upgrading a flying pirate ship, hiring crew, and pushing toward the prologue’s endpoint: taking on the Mad Oracle to help Berry escape.
Lootbane (Demo)
- Developers: Milo Panta
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Full Game Expected For 2026
- Steam Page
Lootbane is a minimalist roguelite RPG built around pure risk management: you pick a hero, gear up with whatever you’ve scavenged, then assemble a small warband of followers whose passive auras and active abilities stack into synergies that can make (or break) a run.
Each run plays out as a string of route choices across shifting regions where you decide whether to dive into a dungeon, shop at a mystery merchant, trade in town, recruit a new follower, or poke at cursed ruins.
Loot is deliberately opaque too: randomized items don’t fully reveal their power until you survive encounters or extract them from the dungeon, so every pickup is a gamble, and the game constantly dares you to press deeper because each floor increases gold and your odds of landing legendary gear while scaling enemy threat, with death wiping the run. It’s listed for a 2026 release on Steam, and a demo is available.
Songs of Silence: Celestial Church DLC
- Developers: Chimera Entertainment
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: December 16, 2025
- Steam Page
When it comes to visual style, Songs of Silence has very few real rivals, and this week the game received yet another show of love from its developers with the release of Celestial Church, a content drop aimed at players who already know the base game’s loop of turn-based kingdom decisions feeding into fast real-time battles, and it splits its additions cleanly between campaign and skirmish.
The DLC adds a new post-base-game story arc set in an Inquisition-era crackdown, delivered across four new chapters with new characters and fully voiced dialogue (the official messaging frames it as 6+ hours of new story).
The bigger gameplay payload is the Celestial Church as a full skirmish faction, built around two hero classes, Inquisitors and Truthweavers, with six vocations, eight new units, plus new unit perks and a fresh card suite that expands both the macro layer and combat layer.
It also introduces the Procession, a “mobile capital” that doubles as the faction’s starting army, which changes how early skirmish tempo and map pressure can play out compared to the base factions.
The expansion was released on December 16, 2025, on Steam (and is also listed as available on GOG and Epic), and it keeps the multiplayer pool unified because DLC owners can still match against players who don’t own it.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon (Demo)
- Developers: Nihon Falcom, PH3 GmbH
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Full Game Expected For January 15, 2026
- Steam Page
The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon pushes the Trails timeline toward a continent-level endgame, set in the Calvard Republic as Zemuria braces for humanity’s first space launch and a Marduk “high-tech training exercise” pulls three leads, spriggan fixer Van Arkride, Ashen Chevalier Rean Schwarzer, and Father Kevin Graham, into intersecting story routes that keep escalating the stakes.
Combat keeps the series’ split-flow setup: encounters can play out in action-leaning Field Battles, then snap into turn-based Command Battles when you want tighter control over turn order and decision-making, and this entry adds new levers on top of the Daybreak-era framework, including Shard Commands triggered through S-Boost buffs, Awakening bursts (Van can tap his Grendel form), and Z.O.C. time-slow tech that boosts damage and stun pressure while it’s active.
Outside the main plot, there’s also the Grim Garten, a dungeon mode where you build a custom party from allies you’ve met and tackle Ouroboros-related problems as a more systems-first challenge track. It’s slated for January 15, 2026, with a Story Demo available on Steam for PC players, while the broader western launch is also announced for PS4, PS5, Switch, and Switch 2.
The Guiding Spirit (Demo)
- Developers: Dice Impact
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Full Game Expected For 2026
- Steam Page
Not exactly my kind of game, but I imagine that for everyone who loves text-based RPGs, The Guiding Spirit could be a very solid title to keep an eye on, especially thanks to the demo that launched over the past few days.
It is a free first-chapter sample of a party-based, text-driven fantasy “story-simulator” where you build the characters and then nudge them as they make their own calls, including choices they might resist if their personality and motivation don’t line up with yours.
It plays like an illustrated gamebook: scenes are hand-drawn, progression is driven by Decision Points, relationship shifts inside the party, and dice checks where critical successes and failures branch into unique outcomes, with a journal tracking the current thread.
Character creation is the main system, with a big pile of knobs to turn, 14 ancestries, 30+ professions, 160+ personality traits, 170+ skills/specializations, 100+ abilities/spells, plus backgrounds, survival traits, followers, domains, and more, so two parties can enter the same chapter with very different toolsets and problem-solving options.
The demo also lets you peek through inventories and equipment for story hooks, watch skills improve through use, and see party dynamics tilt toward alliances or outright conflict, and it leans into replay structure by treating wipes and rerolls as a way to surface new scenes, twists, and challenges; it launched on Steam on December 9, 2025, with the full game currently dated for 2026.
Valor of Man (Demo)
- Developers: Legacy Forge
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: Full Game is still TBA
- Steam Page
Valor of Man is a turn-based tactics roguelite RPG from Legacy Forge, published by Numskull Games, built around a “reaction” combat system where each attack can trigger an enemy response and alter the board state.
Runs use a four-hero party, and actions are constrained by limited action points each turn, forcing you to budget points between skills and items while you try to set up favorable trades and avoid opening counters you can’t afford.
Between fights, the run structure pivots on decision nodes, rest stops, gambles, merchants, or more combat, across procedurally generated chapters, with the full game promising 12 hero classes, 10 difficulty tiers (“Valor” difficulties), and a loot/progression pool listed at 300+ abilities, 290 items, and 170 artifacts, plus 50+ enemies and nine boss fights.
It’s currently marked “Coming soon” on Steam, with a Q1 2026 release window shared by the publisher, and this Steam demo was extended through January 7, 2026, and covers content up to the end of Chapter 2 in the game’s three-act structure.
That’s everything noteworthy I had to share with you this week. Let me know what you think, and in the meantime, have a great weekend. Ciao
