RPGs Coming This Week, 8/10/25

Mythscroll – August 11th (Windows, Linux)

Mythscroll is a solo-developed text-based RPG where every choice matters. Create your character through a D&D-inspired system by selecting your class, race, age, and more. Once you’re ready, you can step into a vast world full of random encounters, powerful loot, and magical abilities to master.

The game features a dynamic morality system that lets the world react to your actions. You can be a saint (and watch as everyone showers you with gifts), a merchant-robbing thief, or commoner-slaughtering tyrant. If you’re feeling ready to shape your own legend, you can play the free demo on Steam now!

by Adem Yilmaz

Hidden Pass – August 14th (Windows)

In Hidden Pass you become a Wanderer: an explorer, warrior, leader, and tactician all at once. Your mission: lead a perilous expedition to uncover the secrets of a region saturated with Elyrium, a rare and hazardous mineral that bends gravity and fuels powerful sorcery. Face vicious monsters, rival factions, and deadly challenges as you master turn-based combat across three map layers, on land and in the air.

Hidden Pass lets you command your own mobile fortress for producing and upgrading new units, as well as upgrading techs to gain the upper hand. The longer your troops survive, the stronger they become!

The Elyrium Belt awaits. You may wish to play the free prologue on Steam and get a head start before launch!

by Adem Yilmaz

Iwakura Aria – August 14th (Switch, Windows)

I’d be hard-pressed to name a better-looking visual novel than Iwakura Aria. It’s a matter of preference, of course, but the painterly illustrations of 100 Nen are so exquisite that I’m positive they alone moved a sizable number of copies. Nevertheless, many say a VN lives or dies by the strength of its narrative, so what exactly is this latest Mages production about?

Set in Japan circa 1966, Iwakura Aria centers around a young girl who takes a housekeeping role for the wealthy and mysterious Iwakura family. Ichiko, described as someone “left behind” amid the country’s rapid development, meets the eponymous Aria, the family heiress. Their relationship is really at the core of this game, which I presume delicately peels back the many secrets of this household throughout the story. Your choices will lead Ichiko to one of nine endings, which take place some 33 years later.

by Gio Castillo

OFF – August 15th (Switch, Windows)

I’m normally skeptical of marketing that lays the superlatives on thick, but I don’t believe it’s exaggerating in the slightest to say OFF is “influential”. It’s one of the first RPGs that just felt relentlessly uncomfortable to play. The atmosphere and narrative gets unbearably bleak (hey, Fear & Hunger and LISA: The Painful) and while OFF isn’t particularly challenging, it definitely took adjusting to the inscrutable, vaguely disgusting nomenclature like “Silver flesh” and “Moloch’s meat” for recovery items. Of course, the monster designs were all so memorably weird and often grotesque.

For someone like young me who was just starting to dip their toes in RPGs not named Pokémon or Final Fantasy, OFF drastically subverted everything I expected from video games. It remains absolutely brilliant, and I strongly hope Fangamer’s remaster does it justice.

by Gio Castillo

Brandish Renewal – August 14th (Switch)

The PC-9801 version of Brandish Renewal is coming this week to Switch, by way of the Eggconsole series of old Japanese PC game ports. This game is an expanded version of the original Brandish, an early action RPG dungeon crawler.

by Gio Castillo