|OT| Thread of promising indie, mid-tier, and under the radar single player role playing games

[texhnolyze]

Compared to 2017 and 2018, RPG lineup for 2019 seems not as amazing, especially in AAA space. We've just had Kingdom Hearts III and that's probably it so far. More to come, we have Fire Emblem Three Houses in July, Pokemon Sword & Shield in late 2019, Biomutant, Code Vein, Shenmue III, and Outer World somewhere in 2019, and probably Granblue Fantasy Relink too. Most other games are remasters and ports, like Dragon Quest XI S and various Final Fantasy remasters. Not bad, but not great either.

Anyway, those games will be well-covered by mainstream media just fine, so let's take a look at some promising indie and lower-budgeted RPGs that might worth checking out. I've been looking at my whistlist and it looks like there are quite a bunch of them. I try to limit the games listed and mentioned here to those that are under $60, and they must be single player or at least focused on it. A lot of these titles might be coming to PC only for now, but lots of them are already planned for console release too. And if the games are successful enough on PC, there will be higher chance of them to get ported to consoles.

I'm breaking down the games to upcoming and early access. Upcoming means they're simply not out yet, and they may be released fully or in early access. While early access means they're already available for puchase but still not a full version yet. Do note that not everything in this thread will be released in 2019, some of them are aiming for 2020 release. Lastly, these are not everything as I will post more games along the way, and I might probably expand and give my impressions on some of the games listed here later.


Upcoming:


































Early Access:











If you have some RPGs that you think worth looking forward to, just post them away!

 

[Gevin]

Awesome post, some real gems on here.

Only bad thing is that my backlog will be bigger

 

[BlueOdin]

Neat list. There is also this:

 

[Routa]

Neat list. There is also this:

To save us from the Underworld Ascendant disaster

 

[Alextended]

Since OP has not-quite-RPG titles too Fae Tactics from Endlessfluff Games, developers of Legend of Fae (they seem to have also been involved with Valdis Story and other games but I'm not 100% sure if they were the primary or sole developer, though that's likely) is coming to Steam in "early 2019". While Legend of Fae was a Puzzle Quest style match-x game Fae Tactics appears to be a full blown tactical rpg in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics (maybe I shouldn't compare to that cos, you know, expectations, I'm sure this will be a game with a smaller scope but I'm excited all the same!). From the official description to me it seems at least partly inspired by one of my favorite but underrated/unknown Falcom series, Vantage Master! I think it looks promising.

 

[texhnolyze]

Yeah, I welcome every RPG sub-genre, including strategy and tactical ones.

Thanks for the recommendation, folks. I've added some of them to my whistlist.

 

[FiveSide]

Great list, if even half of them deliver then it'll be a fantastic year for indie RPGs indeed.

I'd like to submit Stone Story RPG, which is slated for this summer and has a fascinating ASCII aesthetic.

Post automatically merged: Feb 28, 2019

Fight Knight is also looking really cool. A unique dungeon-crawler with an emphasis on punching things to death:

 

[Luminaire]

Don’t forget about Virgo Vs The Zodiac!



It’s an rpg inspired by Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, and Earthbound. It’s incredibly charming, cute, and funny. I believe the creator, Nana, is from Brazil and she’s hilarious and full of positivity.

The old demo was great and I’m very excited for it. It should be out this year as she is finishing up the last sets of animations.

Also I’ve played like 20hrs of Troubleshooter, so I can answer any questions about it.

 

[Alextended]

I think Destiny Connect (PS4 & Switch) could turn out either way. To me it's promising as a concept and charming in implementation but it hasn't proven itself. It's Japanese yet looks like a Pixar game. Last I read it was coming out in a couple weeks (in Japan) but maybe I missed news of a delay. I'm getting Opoona vibes.

Here's a trailer and gematsu's posts:


Destiny Connect Archives - Gematsu

 

[Ex-User (119)]

my recommend is this

launches march 5 with 25% discount its on greenmangaming for £10.50

it started off sinpired by onimusha and resident evil, (the game does the camera mechanic onimusha does where after you reach certain part of screen camera changes). they have developers from dark souls and a few zelda games on team too.

there is two playable heroes,

crafting is in game and you can find receipes from monsters (its a random from, a certain mob can drop a certain receipe %chance, in your journal you can find what monster drops which)

save game is done at certain locations.

heres one of the skills you get

 

[Casper]

Awesome list, thank you! Well I thank you texhnolyze --- my wishlist and backlog can't bring themselves to thank you. I couldn't get into Age of Decadence but Colony Ship looks far more approachable to me. One of what feels like 70 games I just added to my list because of you. Thank for the heads up on some of these, and reminder that I can't wait for some of the others I already knew about like Eastward and Griftlands.

 

[Kurt Russell]

my recommend is this

launches march 5 with 25% discount its on greenmangaming for £10.50

it started off sinpired by onimusha and resident evil, (the game does the camera mechanic onimusha does where after you reach certain part of screen camera changes). they have developers from dark souls and a few zelda games on team too.

there is two playable heroes,

crafting is in game and you can find receipes from monsters (its a random from, a certain mob can drop a certain receipe %chance, in your journal you can find what monster drops which)

save game is done at certain locations.

heres one of the skills you get

That looks really good and for some reason I'd never heard of it. Thanks for sharing!

 

[texhnolyze]

Oh, and folks, don't sleep on Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It's a combination of rice farming and action combat. Looks very promising!

 

[Mor]

I think it's time for me to participate in here because if there's something I like it's the indie and mid-tier scene, full of great ideas and products that wouldn't come out otherwise so I think I will start with a project I have been following for a while, shall we?

SIGNALIS

​

A strange planet, an abandoned facility and Elster, a technician Replika looking for answers about herself and the facility but also a way to scape this frozen hell.. Signalis aims to be a classic survival horror experience but with a different aesthetic, puzzles, combat, exploration, everything build to be a tense experience where the story promises to be interesting.

​

There isn't any release date at the moment, but the project is going well and sure looks fantastic.
if you want to check out the development you should totally follow their twitter account.

 

[Ascheroth]

I'll add World of Horror to this thread~


It's supposedly releasing sometime this year on Steam and Switch.

There's a demo/alpha/whatever you want to call it on itch:

WORLD OF HORROR by panstasz

1bit adventure game of cosmic horror inspired by the work of Junji Ito

panstas.itch.io

 

[texhnolyze]

Main highlight of PlayStation China Hero Project from a few days ago.



A sci-fi action RPG with fantastic artstyle. The whole thing reminds me of Nier Automata, from main character (also a robot) to presentation and combat. The combat looks somewhat better in this game somehow, slower and more methodical.

 

[texhnolyze]

Kinda missed this one, but apparently Warhammer: Chaosbane beta has been started since last week. People can join by pre-ordering the game. Only 2 classes available in the beta, while at launch all 4 classes will be available.

Here's some impressions, sounds good:

 

[Alextended]

I think Destiny Connect (PS4 & Switch) could turn out either way. To me it's promising as a concept and charming in implementation but it hasn't proven itself. It's Japanese yet looks like a Pixar game. Last I read it was coming out in a couple weeks (in Japan) but maybe I missed news of a delay. I'm getting Opoona vibes.

Here's a trailer and gematsu's posts:


Destiny Connect Archives - Gematsu

 

[fsdood]

Gonna bump this thread with new games

 

[texhnolyze]

Ah, thanks for reminding me that I haven't updated this OP. Done.

 

[goat]

One I'm really excited for:

 

[sauce]

I hate this thread because it bloats my wishlist.

Really looking forward to Indivisible, hopefully that still releases on Steam this year.