This one looks absolutely fascinating and is very much my sort of game. It’s called The Backworld, a fairly cheeky RPG with a number of genuinely interesting concepts. It’s a JRPG-style adventure at its heart, with a rather disturbing setting, and you fight cosmic horrors in turn-based combat. There’s also some real-time platforming and a sanity meter to keep an eye on. I’ve pulled together a bit of info on it, so let’s have a look.
Numor Games and publisher Top Hat Studios have confirmed that The Backworld will be launching for PC, announcing it during Top Hat Studios Presents: Fall Showcase 2026, complete with a release window trailer (I shared below) which showcases the game’s blend of party-based adventuring and surreal horror.
A war spreading across dimensions eventually makes it to your hometown, and you and your mates are thrown into a fractured reality to stop it all from coming to an end. The journey takes you through all sorts of bizarre places, from the genuinely disturbing to the outright fantasy and sci-fi. There’s non-linear exploration and traversal abilities that open up new paths, with 50 hours of gameplay across over 100 areas and more than 400 enemy types to face.
Combat is a mix of turn-based encounters and hazards that require you to move in real time. In an earlier RPGamer interview, developer Nathan Jennings gave the example of bosses that will go between a defensive phase (where you’re just trying to dodge attacks or deflect them) and an offensive phase (where you use the turn-based system).
Standard encounters also allow for a degree of preparation, as you can lure the enemy into a trap or an environmental hazard, or use stealth to get around a fight you don’t want to have. There are also instances of diplomacy in the form of dialogue encounters where the creature you’re facing is amenable to negotiation.
Sanity is another problem for the expedition. Being exposed to horrors can lead to a loss of control on the part of the characters, and hallucinations can bring in fake NPCs and misleading interface elements. That puts the horror in a particularly nasty spot to hide in as it can be lurking in the very information you’d normally rely on to make your decisions. It makes keeping everyone alive a bit more of a challenge when even the interface is going to be a source of the problem.
Your traveling companions bring their own individuality, their own stories and their own combat resources. The wizard will be mana-dependent, the robot will be energy-dependent, so you’ve got different demands on your party in battle. Non-human recruits are part of the mix and you can also bring pets into the adventure. The combat capabilities are supplemented by exploration capabilities which include a hoverboard for crossing gaps, sprinting and a dodge roll.
Equipment gives you active abilities and passive effects with over 600 items and pieces of gear (including a flesh sword which regenerates health, a hoodie which allows you to go stealth and a shield which reflects attacks).
Difficulty can be tweaked individually for RPG combat, survival horror and navigation. Higher combat difficulty will see the addition of enemy abilities and passives as well as increased stats. Horror difficulty can bring in hunger, permadeath and a single save file. Navigation difficulty will affect the maps and the amount of traversal assistance you get. You can of course dial any of those pressures right down if you’re after a more relaxed form of exploration, or indeed mix and match them all for a genuinely punishing trip through the multiverse.
A demo is out on Steam (though Numor Games have made it clear that the scenario in the demo is distinct from the full game’s story). In their September dev update they explained that the finished adventure will have a more linear opening which sets up the world the player is in prior to the stranger events. The demo therefore is just a taster of the systems and the atmosphere, not the opening chapter of the campaign.
Backworld is due Q2 2027 on PC via Steam, and I think you should add it to your wishlist. No exact launch date or price has been announced yet. Below, I share the trailer.
