CGM checked out Outward 2:

Going Hands-On With Outward 2 - True Grit RPG

I won’t lie that I went into Outward 2 with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I was not the biggest fan of Nine Dots’ action RPG when I reviewed it back in 2019 - although for some reason or another, my review seemed to get lost in the annals of time. However, that was quite some years ago, and I like to think I’ve grown as a person; and in truth, I was both surprised and curious to see a sequel to the game. Perhaps old grievances will have been addressed and gameplay enhanced!

It still might be too early to tell, seeing how the hands-on version of Outward 2 I got to play prominently stated at the top-right of the screen that it was an Alpha and, “everything can change,”  but the game certainly feels bigger than I remember its predecessor being. However, diving into this sequel with a renewed perspective certainly made me appreciate a lot more about it - and to some degree, its predecessor.

[...]

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The retro RPG Sacred: Last Pixel of Ancaria will be on Kickstarter on April 14, 2026.

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Couchpotato spotted the Making of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II:

Immersion, Story and Henry's Well Worn Shoes - The Making of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II | BAFTA

Go behind the scenes with the developers at the Prague based Warhorse Studios to discover how they brought the immersive world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II to life, and hear from Henry himself, Tom McKay, on what it was like stepping into the hungry shoes of Henry of Skalitz!

Ars Technica interviewed Chris Avellone:

“Players are selfish”: Fallout 2’s Chris Avellone describes his game design philosophy

Avellone recaps his journey from learning on a TRS-80 to today.

Chris Avellone wants you to have a good time.

People often ask creatives—especially those in careers some dream of entering—”how did you get started?” Video game designers are no exception, and Avellone says that one of the most important keys to his success was one he learned early in his origin story.

“Players are selfish,” Avellone said, reflecting on his time designing the seminal computer roleplaying game Planescape: Torment. “The more you can make the experience all about them, the better. So Torment became that. Almost every single thing in the game is about you, the player.”

The true mark of a successful game is when players really enjoy themselves, and serving that essential egotism is one of the fundamental laws of game design.

It’s a lesson he learned long before he became an internationally renowned game designer, before Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment were twinkles in the eyes of Avellone and his co-workers at Interplay. Avellone’s first introduction to building fictional worlds came not from the digital realm but from the analog world of pen and paper roleplaying games.

Table-top takeaways
Avellone discovered Dungeons and Dragons at the tender young age of nine, and it was a formative influence on his creative life and imagination.

“Getting exposed to the idea of Dungeons and Dragons early was a wake-up call,” he told me. “‘Oh, wow, it’s like make believe with rules!’—like putting challenges on your imagination where not everything was guaranteed to succeed, and that made it more fun. However, what I noticed is that I wasn’t usually altering the systems drastically; it was more using them as a foundation for the content.”

[...]

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The Turn Based Lovers checked out Wicked Seed:

Wicked Seed – A Survival Horror RPG Mashup Of Parasite Eve And Resident Evil

In the past few days, I tried the new, polished demo of Wicked Seed, a project I’ve been following for a while from the solo developer working under the name Dead Right Games. Since I think the game shows a lot of potential and its release date isn’t far off, I figured I’d put together this preview to help set the stage for launch.

I’ll start by saying it isn’t strictly a turn-based game. Exploration unfolds in real time, very much in the style of Resident Evil, and while the combat system also stays real-time, it uses a slow-motion mechanic to let you assign commands to the protagonist, an approach that fits together surprisingly well.

The story opens with the strikingly beautiful protagonist, Ella, who receives a letter from her brother asking her to meet him in Maine because strange things are happening at the company he works for. She hasn’t seen or heard from him in a long time, so she gets in her car and heads out to find him.

Things escalate quickly. You’ll soon be guiding Ella through a forest, following the unfolding events delivered through notes you discover along the way and the character’s voiced reactions, with several cutscenes that build the right amount of suspense.

Encounters with strange creatures intensify, and, piece by piece, darker, more dangerous details emerge to drive the narrative forward.

[...]

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Couchpotato spotted a development update for Of Ash and Steel:

Quick Development Update #2

Hey everyone,

Here's an update on Patch 1.05, which we’re actively preparing for release.

The main thing slowing us down right now is the game's intricate save system. It has been producing inconsistent results - items disappearing, objects duplicating, and even NPCs appearing twice with broken logic.

To solve this, we brought in experienced external developers to help us get everything into a stable, working state. The biggest challenge is making sure the new system also works correctly with existing saves - especially for those of you who’ve already played a lot. That means we need to carefully test and verify that everything now loads correctly, no matter where you are in the game. Once we’ve locked down saving and loading, future patches will arrive much faster.

We're also working in parallel on two other areas:

Performance Optimization
This means better use of memory (both RAM and VRAM), which should help reduce "Out of Memory" crashes and random critical errors. It’ll also improve load times and reduce FPS drops over time. We're focusing mainly on performance-intensive areas, such as the main city. Ideally, this work will also help the game run more smoothly on Steam Deck down the line.

Bug Fixes
We’re actively gathering bug reports and prioritising the most critical issues. Some of these will be fixed in Patch 1.05, including story-blocking bugs and workarounds for broken quests.

To give you a better idea of what’s coming, here’s a preview list of confirmed fixes for Patch 1.05. These are not yet live in the game - just a sneak peek.

[...]

Mortismal Gaming presents the mod Skyblivion:

My Thoughts On The Skyblivion Project

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Couchpotato spotted a new trailer for Dying Light: The Beast:

Dying Light: The Beast - Official Update 1.4 Trailer

Watch the latest Dying Light: The Beast trailer for the FPS game to see what to expect with update 1.4, which brings features, new content, and improvements to gameplay, visuals, and performance. Check it out to see the details of the update, including features like New Game+, Legend Levels, a new Vanguard Outfit for Kyle unlocked through the Legend Levels, and more.

Genshin Impact version Luna III has been released:

Character Trailer - "Durin: A Story Born for This"

Character Trailer - "Jahoda: No Hunt in Vain" 

The Turn Based Lovers present games of their favourite genre:

Top 10 Classic Turn-Based RPGs and Strategy Games That Still Hold Up

Here’s a list of some RPG and strategy classics that still hold up perfectly today and that, in my opinion, absolutely deserve a spot in every genre fan’s library.

Before anyone charges in with a flaming keyboard and a Wikipedia link, let me say this loud and slow: these picks are in no special order. None. Nada. Zero. I didn’t rank them. I didn’t consult a committee of nerd monks hidden in a mountain temple.

These are simply my personal turn-based classics, the ones that still slap harder than my old math teacher when I forgot homework. You might have your own holy list. Fantastic. Go ahead and drop your favorites, your rants, your childhood trauma stories, whatever you want, in the comments.

We all bond over shared suffering anyway. But for now, let me walk you through ten timeless games that still hold up today, even if your GPU doesn’t understand why you’re booting half of them.

[...]

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Styx: Blades of Greed will be released on February 19, 2026.

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Couchpotato spotted a progress report for Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call:

Vahrin's Call Progress Report - November 2025

Good Monday morning/afternoon/evening mercs!

I hope you're all doing well and are excited for the upcoming holidays. It's crazy to think that we're already in December, where on earth has all the time gone?

Steam Page & Release Date Changes

Before we dive into what we've been working on throughout November, we want to take a step back and update you all on where the game sits as a whole. We've always aimed to be as transparent as possible, and we think it's important to address where our minds have been the past couple of months.

We've had many of you questioning why the game's release date is still listed as 2025 on our Steam page, and if that is still accurate. Rightfully so, as we're now almost at the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Our ambition and intention was always to release the game by the end of 2025, but it has become clear that is not possible with the time we have left. As such, we have postponed the release until 2026.

[...]

Firesquid Games is the new publisher of Prelude Dark Pain.

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The Wayward Realms will get its own engine:

Transitioning Away From Unreal

We want to extend a sincere thank you for the overwhelmingly positive reception to our last Devlog. Your feedback made one thing absolutely clear, this community is here because you care about deep systems, meaningful choices, and solid, uncompromised gameplay. That clarity has guided our next big step.

After reviewing the many thoughtful comments we received, we’ve made a major but exciting decision, we are fully transitioning away from Unreal Engine and building our own proprietary engine. This move gives us the control and flexibility needed to deliver the experience you’ve told us you want. Over the past few weeks, our entire focus has been on developing this new engine, and we’re thrilled to say that we’ll have something to show you soon, with a new Devlog showcase planned for early in the new year.

Shifting to our own engine is a major step, and while it positions us to deliver a far better game, it also means we won’t be able to meet the end-of-year goal we previously set. Our new target is to release to our Kickstarter backers in June of next year, with a public Early Access release following a few months later. 

We also want to remind you that we’ll be hosting our Live AMA on Wednesday, December 3rd, and we invite all of you to join us and ask any questions you have about the new engine and the road ahead.

Thank you again for the trust, enthusiasm, and insight you continue to share with us. Stay tuned, big things are coming.

Features
The new engine allows us to:

• Achieve 30+ FPS on decade-old laptops without dedicated GPUs, giving us excellent performance even on very low-end hardware.
• Run the game at nearly 30 FPS on a first-generation Nintendo Switch, ensuring smooth performance on all major consoles, with full Linux support included.
• Load Eyjar, a static map four times the size of Manhattan, in under one second, providing an almost instant start.
• Load the entire engine in roughly 300 milliseconds, which allows extremely fast iteration and has already more than doubled our development speed.
• Offer full community modding support for everything outside the core systems, using a public scripting language inspired by C# as a tribute to the Daggerfall Unity community.

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Matt and friends remember Rebecca Heineman:

Matt Chat Remembers Rebecca Heineman

Rebecca "Burger" Heineman was, in addition to being a genius programmer and game developer, was a great friend of the show.
Mat and I are joined by Susan Manley, who worked with Becky and her wife Jennell at Olde Skuul.
Susan also tells us about her music career and shares dozens of stories about Becky, Jennell, and many others who crossed paths with them. Though Becky has sadly passed on, we were never forget her legacy here at Matt Chat.

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GameSpot checked out Elden Ring - Nightreign:

We Played Elden Ring Nightreign's New Characters For 6 Hours

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Tim talks about Temple of Elemental Evil:

Temple Of Elemental Evil Design Highlights

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Arknights: Endfield will be released in early 2026:

Arknights: Endfield - Official Chen Qianyu: The Swordbearer Operator Story Trailer

The Hack and Slash game Kingdom of Night will be released today:

Kingdom of Night - Release Date Trailer

A brand-new release date trailer for 80's-inspired action RPG, Kingdom of Night, has dropped, showcasing a flood of never-before-seen gameplay, from infernal boss battles and neon-lit streets, to haunting glimpses of the cult-driven chaos overtaking Miami, Arizona. The trailer also features an original theme song composed by none other than Vince DiCola, the legendary 1980s composer behind Transformers: The Movie and Rocky IV.

Learn more about the cinematics of Dragonkin: The Banished:

How Cinematics are made in Dragonkin

Meet Lea Martel, our cinematic artist

Hello Dragon Hunters,

Today, we want to share a behind-the-scenes look at Dragonkin’s cinematics.

These were all created by Lea Martel in collaboration with our awesome animation, 3D and VFX team too. If you are interested in how they managed to bring cinematics to life, you are in the right place as we are going to dive into details!

But first of all, let’s explain…

Why does cinematics matter in a Hack & Slash?
Cinematics are a way to ground the narrative, heighten immersion, and highlight the moments that matter the most.

In Dragonkin, we employ a variety of cinematic types, from class or major-encounter introductions, panoramas, and key story moments to emphasize critical events.

In ARPGs, players are almost always on the move.

They’re either busy tweaking their Ancestral Grid, theorycrafting, or roaming through maps fighting dozens of enemies. Cinematics create a little downtime where the player can have a moment to pause and breathe. After a hard-fought boss fight, for example, a cinematic lets them fully soak in the victory, relish that sense of accomplishment, or appreciate the stakes of the world through characters and boss introductions. Panoramas make the world more grounded and can even help the player to scout the area from afar.

Another thing, especially tied to Hack & Slash, is that the camera usually is set above the player, for gameplay purposes. With cinematics we can break that perspective, giving the game a new dimension. By moving the camera closer and framing the world from unfamiliar angles, we can show environments on another lens .

Ideally, cinematics are designed to be meaningful and memorable, creating a “wow” moment for the player, reaching a point where the game can “show, not tell” and not rely on solely exposition.

[...]

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Learn more about the importance of offerings in Vikings Dynasty:

Honoring the Gods

The importance of offerings in Viking culture

Hello Warriors and Shield Maidens,

Today, we want to touch on a slightly different topic in Viking culture. The relationship of the people to the gods and the meaning behind offerings.

The Norse worldview of that time was built on the principle of exchange, a bond of loyalty that governed relationships between people and even more so between humans and gods. Honoring the gods through offerings was a vital expression of devotion, gratitude, and divine favor. By giving gifts like valuables, animals, or the symbolic sharing of a feast, the Vikings believed they were honoring the gods, while expecting them to give something back in return in various forms. The Norse circle of gods was believed to have an impact on every aspect of daily life, from weather to warfare, from fortune to fertility, and everything in between. This cycle of ‘do ut des’, which could be roughly explained as “I give, so that you may give in return” was one of the foundations of the world view.

The acts of giving, the offering also known as blót, were an integral part of life in the community. By getting together and sharing the experience, e.g., by feasting together or presenting gifts to the gods, the people strengthened their social bonds as individuals, as a group, and of course their relation with the respective gods. The act of giving showed commitment as well as respect for the gods, while in return the Vikings sought the pantheon’s assistance in matters of survival, fortune, or calm seas up to strength in the next battle.

One could almost go so far as to say that the practice of offerings was very important to maintaining the balance of the cosmos. Giving up something meaningful demonstrated humility and acknowledgement of greater forces. The sense of contributing to the struggle of the gods against the forces of chaos, eventually leading to Ragnarök.

In the world of Vikings Dynasty, we pay hommage to honoring the gods in a variety of ways, from temples to offering spots, as you will find out when you start your journey around Steineyjar Islands. We will share more info on that at a later point.

Until then!

Skål,

Digital Daredevils and Toplitz Productions

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The Turn Based Lovers present games of their favourite genre:

New Turn-Based RPGs To Play – November 29, 2025

The final recap of November’s new releases is here, featuring all the RPGs and strategy games that dropped over the past few days. November’s been busy and packed, and honestly, I’m all for it.

This week, the spotlight is mostly on demos and a few noteworthy DLCs, though there’s no shortage of interesting releases. I’ve tried several of them, they’re all on the list, and I have to say, they’re absolutely worth your time. But you’ll find out more as you scroll through this article.
​
[...]

Seasons of Solitude – Demo
Primal Fray
Hunter’s Moon: A Sovereign Syndicate Adventure
Fabled Lands – The Castle of Lost Souls DLC
Superstar Strategy
Veterum (E.A.)
Glasshouse (Playtest)Dragonero – The Rise of Draquir Master Mode DLC
Dragonero – The Rise of Draquir Master Mode DLC
The Use of Life (Out of Early Access)
Wicked Seed (Demo)

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Some RPG news of the week:

RPGamer: Round-Up: November 23 – November 30

 RPGFan: RPGs Coming This Week, 11/30/25

The RPG End of Eden has been announced for 2027:

End of Eden

End of Eden is an open world RPG where you arrive unwanted on a cursed island and must earn every inch. Master tight melee, archery and magic. Join a faction, grow deep talents, craft gear, and explore a living world with real routines, tough bosses and meaningful quests.

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Learn more about exploration and dungeon delving in Revenge of the Firstborn:

Exploration and Dungeon Delving in Revenge of the Firstborn

Diving into overland travel and the dungeon exploration options, such as swimming and climbing

Hello everyone!

Winter is in the air here in the Midwest of the USA. Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas carols are beginning to come out in force and it’s time for the end-of-November monthly deep dive into one of the features in Revenge of the Firstborn. This month, we’re going to talk about exploration. We’ll touch a bit on the overland map and look more closely at the ways you get the most out of dungeons in the game.

The Overland Map
The overland map is completely open from the start of the game. There are a number of cities and villages you can visit, most of which will have something for you to do, if you need a distraction from saving the world. There are also a number of hidden dungeons where you can find unique gear, including parts of artifacts that can be combined into powerful items.

Just be careful where you wander, you may quickly find yourself in a fight that is too tough for your current level! Each part of the map has a chance for a random encounter and there are hotspots scattered around the map with their own higher challenge rating. For instance, the area around an ancient ruin will have a higher chance of an encounter with undead, some of them potentially powerful.

The distance you can cover each day depends on whether you are traveling on foot or whether every member of the party has a horse. When traveling on roads you travel more quickly and when traveling off-road, you must make survival checks periodically to avoid getting lost.

There are lots of hidden secrets on the overland map that should make exploring every square inch worthwhile for the wandering adventurer.

Dungeon Delving
The real meat and potatoes of Revenge of the Firstborn is dungeon delving. You’ll find the full suite of exploration options from the 3.5 SRD at your disposal. More and more frequently these days isometric RPGs include a lot of vertical features to bring a wider range of character skills into play. Revenge of the Firstborn is no different in that regard; in order to fully explore all of the dungeons in the game, you’ll want to have at least one character who is good at Climbing, Swimming and the other exploration skills such as Balance and Jump.

Climbing
The game includes a lot of ruins, and many of those ruins don’t have intact stairs anymore, so you will be required to use the climb skill, or the Fly spell if your wizard can cast it, to reach some areas in the dungeons of Revenge of the Firstborn. While some games take the approach of marking specific surfaces as being climbable, Revenge of the Firstborn allows any vertical surface to be climbed, including overhangs if you have a rope!

As per the SRD rules, characters with a higher movement speed also climb higher. Climber’s kits and ropes provide a bonus to the Climbing skill check. Of course, a wizard can make all of this trivial by casting the Fly spell and simply willing himself up to the top of a climb.

Swimming
Some dungeons in the world have become flooded over time. In order to reach tantalizing loot or open up other parts of a dungeon, you’ll need to have a character skilled in swimming. Don’t forget to remove your armor as the armor check penalty is doubled!

Clearing the Gap
Next, we have the Balance and Jump skills. There are many areas in the game where you can reach optional parts of a dungeon by walking over a narrow ledge, or jumping over it if your Jump skill is high enough (once again, the wizard in the party can save the day with the Jump spell).

Characters with higher strength can jump farther. The Difficulty Check for all jumps is equal to the distance of the jump. If you fail the check by less than 5, you clear the gap but fall prone when you land. Fail the check by more than 5 and you will find yourself falling into whatever gap you’re trying to clear, with potentially disastrous results!

Traps
Last but not least are the rogue’s bread and butter, traps. In Revenge of the Firstborn, you can manually search for traps in areas where you’re suspicious, but rogues (and clerics with the Find Traps spell active) also automatically get a chance to Spot traps as they are nearing them. If your rogue’s Spot skill is high enough, they will bring the party to a stop and point out the trap. If your rogue’s Spot skill is good, but not quite good enough, they will stop the party’s movement and warn everyone that the area looks suspicious. This is your cue to manually search for traps. Some traps have search Difficulty Checks high enough that they can only be found by manually searching but this should be rare unless you are exploring a dungeon far above your capabilities. The goal is to not force the player to manually search every 10 feet.

The traps themselves range from fire spout traps, to spike traps, to poison cloud traps and pit traps filled with anything from spikes to water to the occasional gelatinous cube.

Hopefully you’ve found this little dive into how you explore the world of Revenge of the Firstborn interesting!

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Noobfeed reviewed Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked:

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked Review

A hybrid of boardgame tactics and role-playing fantasy that doesn't fully live up to its Dungeons & Dragons promise.

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked marks an ambitious partnership between the popular digital board game Demeo and the iconic Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Resolution Games is known for its VR work with Demeo. Now, they have combined the tactical, dungeon-crawling gameplay of Demeo with the fiction and history of Dungeons & Dragons.

The end result is an interesting mix of turn-based strategy, cooperative play, and well-known magical worlds. The game, which you can get on Meta Quest, PSVR2, and PC, brings the world of Dungeons & Dragons into the immersive world of VR. It's fun to play and looks good, but D&D fans are used to more complex and rich RPGs.

[...]

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is an enjoyable and visually impressive game that successfully merges the Demeo formula with the fantasy lore of Dungeons & Dragons. The gameplay is solid, offering a fun mix of tactical combat and cooperative play.

But the game falls short when it comes to making an authentic D&D experience. Battlemarked feels more like a re-skinned version of Demeo than a real D&D game because characters don't change in complicated ways, skill checks are hard to do, and there isn't enough RPG depth. There are some fun parts, especially when playing with other people, but the Dungeons & Dragons license isn't fully used.

Verdict:
A promising fusion of Demeo's tactical gameplay and Dungeons & Dragons' lore, but it lacks the depth and flexibility that D&D fans expect. Great for multiplayer sessions, but not a true RPG experience.

Score: 72/100

The RPG Codex reviewed Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2:

RPG Codex Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has cultivated quite a positive reputation since its release in 2004. Looking back at our own reviews at the time, our staff found it rather disappointing ("...it really isn't the great game we were hoping to get," "...had the potential to be exceptional but landed far too short of its intended goal," "...some absolutely idiotic design decisions that reduce a perfect 10 to a mediocre 7.5."). However, its merits were acknowledged, and some aspects held up in light of many worse role-playing game trends to come.

In 2019, when Paradox announced they were publishing a sequel developed by Hardsuit Labs (a studio that had only ever assisted other studios with multiplayer first-person shooters), the response was a mix of optimism and pessimism. The latter grew as the development team revealed more details and showed off more gameplay footage. It grew even further when Paradox/Hardsuit publicly fired the lead writer, who had also been the principal writer of the first one. It grew further still when they announced in early 2021 that the entire project had been rebooted with a new development team. It possibly reached the nadir in late 2023 when they finally released the details of the new iteration, now being developed by The Chinese Room (once a walking sim developer, now a Ship of Theseus), and showed off gameplay footage of the new version in early 2024.

It's been a long, hard road out of development hell, but Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has finally been released. It shouldn't be too surprising that the reception has been mixed, lukewarm at best. What surprised me is that I actually liked it. I was more pessimistic than ever after the extended gameplay reveal back in 2024 on account of how terrible it looked. Yet they kept iterating, and I was so impressed with how much had been improved that I had to play it immediately, foregoing my usual long wait for patches and a deep discount. My instincts were correct, so despite this not being the type of game this site goes for at all, I find it worthy of a long-form analysis.

[...]

Final Death

To dust off an old phrase, Bloodlines 2 is good for what it is - a stealth action game with reactive dialogue - and bad at what it isn't - an RPG and a proper follow-up to Bloodlines. While I personally enjoyed the stealth action, story, music, art, and vocal performances, it's simply far too lacking in RPG systems, gameplay variety, and meaningful optional content. It would have been more dignified for Paradox to outright cancel or rename the project after Hardsuit failed to deliver; too bad for them and all the disappointed Bloodlines fans that the incentives weren't strong enough to do either. Oh well. As far as disappointments go, I'll gladly take one that personally appeals to me and hardly anyone else.

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Mortismal Gaming presents his favorite soulslike games:

My Favorite Soulslike Games

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C4G presents some lesser known upcoming RPGs:

Lesser-Known RPGs I'm Really Looking Forward to in 2026

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GamingBolt looks back at 5 years of Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 5 Years Later - From Disaster To Redemption... But Fans Remember Everything

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The strategy title Void Marauders has been released:

Void Marauders Launch Trailer

Lead a band of space pirates and loot and pillage your way across the stars in this turn based tactical game!

The strategy RPG Project Thea has been released into Early Access:

Project Thea is Live!

Project Thea is now available in Early Access.

And so it begins...

The world has ended - again. But you, Alloy? You are the one rebuilding it.

We are excited to announce that Project Thea is now available in Early Access. Step into a dark, Slavic-inspired post-apocalypse where fate, folklore, and forgotten magichines collide. As the Alloy, you will rebuild the last surviving colony, explore the Wasteland, gather resources, and face enemies using deep, tactical card-based combat.

What awaits you in Early Access right now

The current build features hours of gameplay and a complete playable loop. You can:

• Explore a retro-futuristic world scarred by the Fall
• Craft tools, cook meals, and manage your supplies
• Rebuild your city and unlock new buildings and research
• Meet companions with their own stories and skills
• Make choices that steer branching narratives
• Fight foes using tactical decks, skills, and quick decision-making
• There is already plenty to do, experiment with, and survive through.

[...]

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Farflame spotted some gameplay for Tides of Annihilation:

Tides of Annihilation | Gameplay Reveal

Farflame spotted a developer diary for Norse: Oath of Blood:

NORSE: Oath of Blood - Developer Diary #1

Mortismal Gaming reviewed Of Ash and Steel:

Of Ash & Steel | The Review

GamingBolt reports that the player freedom of The Blood of Dawnwalker can be compared with the original Fallouts:

The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Level of Player Freedom is Compared With Classic Fallouts by Director

The director noted that The Blood of Dawnwalker won't have a "main quest". Rather players will have freedom to figure things out.

Developer Rebel Wolves has made no secret of the fact that its upcoming RPG – The Blood of Dawnwalker – will have player agency as one of its core gameplay aspects. In an interview with Eurogamer, game director Konrad Tomaskiewicz has spoken about the RPG and compared it to some of the giants of the genre, both modern and classics.

When it comes to the central structure of The Blood of Dawnwalker, Tomaskiewicz said that players won’t really find a singular main quest to follow. Rather, they will encounter different kinds of quests, and figure out things like where their main target might be. This also means that the player can then decide to immediately take out the target, or even hang back and do some other quests that might help weaken the target’s position. He noted that the number of options presented to players is the studio’s attempts at bringing the freedom of gameplay decisions that can often only be seen in table-top RPGs.

“No, there’s no main quest. You build your experience from the quests you encounter,” he explained. “You know where your enemy is. You can attack this place anytime you want to. It’s up to you if you want to do it by yourself, or if you want to build yourself, find the powerful items, develop your character, or do some quests and find allies to help you do it. We want to bring video games closer to pen-and-paper RPGs and give you the freedom to experience what you want to experience.”

[...]

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The action adventure Echoes of the End got a free update:

Echoes of the End - Enhanced Edition Trailer

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Like every week the RPG Crawler sums up the CRPG news:

CRPG News Roundup (11-29-2025)

Titan Quest II features relics and charms now:

Introducing Relics and Charms

In this devblog we are giving a brief introduction into the different relics and charms to further advance your gear
Heroes!

In our last post we previewed the new Forge Mastery, which you will be able to play very soon.

Today we are happy to announce that Charms and Relics will also be included in that update.

We know that this has been an often requested feature, so let’s get into it and give you an overview of what it’s about:

[...]

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