Roadwarden

Easily the best text adventure game I've played - great intrigue, memorable characters, evocative descriptions, real consequences for choices, and the reputation system is really well implemented.

I especially like how you have to sometimes type in what you're looking for, whether it's people or places, to lock you behind having actual knowledge instead of seeing a selectable dialogue and thinking "Oh, I didn't know about this, but my character does!"

Actual replayability is somewhat limited, but there ARE a lot of different exclusive questlines, shaped by the choices you make. The reputation system is amazing. I haven't tried mage or warrior yet, but the scholar is awesome.

A really fun adventure where you read through an RPG set in a wilderness filled with fantasy beasts of all kind. While some choices and quests can be quite obtuse the experience is still extremely worthwhile and few games deliver on the same feeling of scenery and real places.

do not play this in normal or hard unless you know what you are doing,on easy you can experience a lot more than on the other difficulties

A Noice Surprise

Bonus Character

great game, I recommend not looking anything up for at least your first couple play-throughs

Great Game. Beat it in 20 hours but left the app open a few times cause I enjoy the ambient music.

This is unbelievably good game considering it's price tag. Hugely recommend for anyone who likes RPGs and choose your own adventure style games.

An amazing RPG with unforgiving choices. I would suggest anyone who will play to take notes (the game has a notebook) and saves often.

Awesome game, incredible atmospheric. Unforgiving endings - took a few plays to get the good ending

This is a really unique and fun game f you like storytelling and a choose your own adventure style. If you're looking for wild and zany this might not be your cup of tea, and the text heavy/visual light style isn't going to be for everyone. But with good storytelling and the ability to influence the tone with your choices, I've found this game engrossing and engaging. I has a retro look and feel that might remind you of games like King's Quest, Wizardry, or Shadowgate, but it's wholly it's own thing.

For me it had a nice balance of the unexpected without any of the actions I can think of having completely random or unreasonable results. You know when you're taking your character into a dangerous situation or pressing your luck with how you talk to someone. And I don't recall any dialogue options that are out of step with what I thought I was picking - something I find annoying in an RPG. There's also good replay value and enough choices that you feel like you're playing a character you have some influence over, so it really bridges the gap between visual novel and RPG. If you are familiar with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante for a comparison, where that leans more toward the interactive story side of things, Roadwarden leans more toward the RPG side.

My playthroughs were smooth with no bugs that I noticed. And navigating the game and UI was very straightforward and very intuitive. The only thing that could be a little tricky for younger players who've never played a game with text inputs, is that taking and making use of notes (there is a built in notes section in the journal) can be helpful for some things.

If you're in the mood for an interactive fantasy adventure story and like the retro aesthetic, I don't think this one will disappoint.

This game reminded me of the older browser games like "Do not escape", but, naturally, done to a much greater dept. The setting is a bit "woke", witch to me felt a little dissonant, but nothing too distracting.

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book and The Witcher had a baby and then took 15 minutes to decide how much to sell it to the goblins for. Engrossing, rewarding, captivating, outstanding music, incredible writing, so immersive and, boy, does it flow. I don't really like the Text-Based genre much... but I adore this one.

This game changed me for the better. I really, really liked it. It was roleplay in the best sense of the word. I made choices, and the ending didn't quite make me cry, but it came close. It just felt... right. I really bonded with my character, Garbanzo the Bean, and his horse Pinto. So much so that even after I immediately started a new game when I beat it for the first time, I couldn't get past the first few pages. I just missed Garbanzo. One day I'll come back and play the other two classes, and do things differently, roleplay different characters, but I'm going to give Garbanzo some time to digest in my soul. Great story, great gameplay, great music. This one will sit with you. I really enjoyed that it wasn't some tale of morality, and "good and evil" alignments weren't really a thing. You weigh each choice you make in it's own context, and you follow your own moral compass, whatever that may be. Loved it.

A really nice little game. Roadwarden cribs elements from a bunch of different genres, but the whole package comes together into something cohesive. It has a great story with plenty of opportunities to make your mark on how things shake out. There are conspiracies to uncover, countless folks to meet, and sides to take aplenty. I really appreciate how so many of the game's conflicts are fairly petty at first glance, yet ultimately interconnected and grounded in the world. The art style is pleasant and consistent -- I just hope you like shades of brown. It's the perfect aesthetic for a game set at the end of Autumn, of course. And last but not least, it's astonishing how vividly Roadwarden brings its characters to life, despite lacking any images of them whatsoever. If that isn't the mark of excellent writing, I don't know what is. Highly recommended for anyone in the mood for a slow-paced, meditative narrative game.

If you're like me and rarely get to play table top games, this almost scratches that RPG-itch. The story is great, and I learn more about it each time I play. The world-building and exposition are done beautifully, the choices the character is presented with are thought provoking, and the soundscapes are really pretty, wrapping up an entrancing and enthralling atmosphere. I don't know about how much long term replayability there is, but I've at least gotten something out of playing a different character with a different background each time, and honestly, infinite replayability is a fool's errand, especially when the stories can be this good.




also also bonus points for gender ambiguous and queer characters that like everyone is just chill with? like no one makes a big deal out of it, some people are just gay or don't really wanna be associated with their gennies, like real life? very refreshing to see such normal representation in a fantasy universe (for more great representation with an albeit more involved oldschool RPG vibes, check out Caves of Qud as well. its not the main theme, but it is there, and that's even more important imo)

I love the dialogue options and they way I can peacefully immerse myself. The game is not stagnant in the slightest.

great game! presented me with interesting choices, mysteries, combat, diplomacy, trade, good music, and more. I liked how character creation was integrated throughout the story. The difficulty settings gave me the control I wanted over my game experience so I got to play through with the default settings and then remove the time limit on my second playthrough. I could slow down and enjoy more of the story, focusing my decisions more on characterization than on managing limited actions. Very enjoyable, loved it.

One of the best games I've ever played. At the end I kept circling back again and again, hoping there would be more interactions to find. I'll play everything these developers make from now on

Beautiful game, i highly advise anyone interested in the fantasy genre play this game.
I get the reading can be boring but this games story is so in depth and has quite a lot of replayability.

I tried to like it but the writing is horrific.... I really wouldn't recommend this to anyone. It's a shame cause it has potential but the writing is, again, horrific. Almost insulting, lol!

A game I won't stop thinking about for a while. The writing was so well done! I loved how my choices impacted the story and how heavy these choices felt in the game. I really enjoyed befriending some of the npcs and seeing the growth between us as I furthered my mission as a roadwarden to help others. I surprisingly loved playing as a mage who could be proficient with my axe and crossbow! The world was beautifully crafted and I adore the soundtrack! The game will feel overwhelming at first, but give it a chance and you'll find an amazing rpg! 10/10.

I absolutely loved this game. I played it when it first came out, enjoyed it, but didn't really grasp the best ways to approach the puzzles and world. I replayed it last month, doing two back to back plays, and had a blast.

The story is a great blend of subtle world building and low fantasy. I really enjoyed that this is a game where making modest coin and surviving is 70% of the battle, and fighting things really isn't the main goal.

The art style is fun and evocative, writing solid, the choices and branching paths gives a lot of potential for replay, and a single play through takes only 7-ish hours depending on your reading speed.

Special shout out for playing this on Steam Deck. It's not technically verified, but other then some of the sections where you type in things, it worked great, and even those sections work okay.

Great game, it gets you realy invested in the story of the people and the world.

Great game with a interesting world building and characters, few game made me feel such variety of emotions like roadwarden did!


I really hope they expand the world and lore with another game, if you have the patience and really like text based rpg this one is one of the best that currently exist.

I really wanted to like this game but it slowly lost its charme a third into the game. The premise and general setup of the story were very intriguing to me and while I enjoyed the world building to some extent, it just felt like a chore after some playtime. I quit two thirds into it and I don't feel like I'm missing out, honestly.

Good: The soundtrack is pretty much perfect. The worldbuilding is quite lovely whenever it is in focus and the art style is a thing to behold.

Bad:
1. As is the case with story rich text-based games, reading a bunch of text is pretty much the only way to glean relevant information, but Roadwarden tends to just shove a bunch of fillertext on screen and intersperse the relevant information and worldbuildung throughout, which gets tedious after a few hours of playing. It happens with characters, who retain a certain importance throughout the narrative aswell as less important side characters, some of which you'll never meet again after the first encounter. It very much feels like the devs "playing for time" in a way.
2. Whenever you meet an important person you get to make a first impression via emotional reactions. Problem is: They seem inconsequential. I never really had a change in story depending on the way I react to people, be it intimidating or vulnerable or whatever else I chose. Seems like a way to fake depth in dialogue.
3. The stat system was also somewhat confusing when looking at the appearance stat. While it shows a minimum score of 0, it can fall below that due to torn or bloodied clothing. So whenever I was at 0 (-1) appearance and gained two points in it, it would show me a score of 1 instead. Confusing and unnecessary. A sixpointed star asset and a max score of 6 would haven been perfectly fine, why hide a negative score? Why not go for 0 to 6?
That's what comes to mind off the top of my head.
If you like this style of game, have at it. You might enjoy it a lot more than I did.
I personally would not recommend it though.

Be careful with your resources, and you may last long enough to discover the absolute gold at the heart of this game. Great story, fantastic characters, and enough hard choices to make you doubt yourself *at least* a dozen times. Satisfying all the way through.

It's a lot of reading, so if you're not into that: skip it.

But if you like story-rich RPGs, especially text-based ones, you'd be a fool not to check it out.

Oh, and pro-tip: Stay skeptical. Things are not as they seem.

I got the game on sale, played it for 30 minutes and then didn't come back to it for half a year. But when I finally came back to it I got sucked in -- the gameplay is really engaging and rewarding, particularly when I had long stretches of time to play. The majority of the gameplay is relaxing with gorgeous music: At one point I accidentally made a decision I didn't mean to make and had really tense moments that made it really exciting. There's something about a primary goal being to help people that is really relaxing and fulfilling. I wish there were more games like this and will definitely do another playthrough after some time has passed and my memory has faded!

I LOVE this game

It's soundtrack is just perfect, it's the right levels of crunch that you'd expect from 8-bit vibes, with just the right hint of nature in each track. Honestly It haunts my dreams.

The art is perfectly distant like everyone in the game is. It's sharp and precise just like a Roadwarden needs to be. It's just so perfect.

The gameplay plays like a choose your own adventure story book. There isn't really a tutorial, from the moment you start you're on the clock (if you play normal mode). It basically points at things in the UI and wishes you luck. You get to decide your characters Morals and Backstory based on questions asked to you by NPCs throughout the game, it's an incredibly interesting way to build a character. I really just love this game.

3 classes, 3 different time limit modes. It almost encourages you to play through it 3 times. If it's any help I've done 2. One as just the brute strength Warrior, and one as a wise pious scholar. My first play through was something like 28 hours (I played on the free roam mode and just explored everything), my second was just about 8 hours (40 day limit). Both times was an amazing experience, I HIGHLY suggest this game.

I badly crave more games like this 10/10.

I will say the beginning is slow and you don't get much reward as most of everyone just about doesn't trust you nor want to speak with you about helping you. After about 5 hrs is when the game really opens up, at this point I got used to the food system and finding shelters to sleep in and where to find most locations on the map and I have an idea of how the politic side of things coincide.

Gaining trust within certain groups of people feel so satisfying later game.

First play through Id recommend not scholar since scholar can read and gets clues quicker id recommend for a 2nd run.
First play through i did regular 40 days of time and got a neutral ending is just about every town and failing my personal quest. 2nd time I decided to go story so i can finish every quest, finished the game at 41days.

Overall I really enjoyed the side quests and building the towns relationship.

Really wanted to like this game but it's too boring with limited choices.

This game was so incredible. Such a rich world that has been built. I recommend everyone, whether you like this genre or not, to give Roadwarden a try or atleast support the creators.

This is such a wonderful game! I love the worldbuilding and all the different choices and characters you can meet! There's a lot of information to take in but I love games like this, it reminds me of old Choose Your Own Adventure novels! Plus, I'm a sucker for any game with lots of lore. And they even have a place for you to look at everything you learn and take notes of your own! Perfect for a game like this!

i can't believe i've not written a review yet - i'll come back to write something more substantial later, but this game touched me quite a lot. the survival elements were excellent to me, difficult enough as suits the setting. the writing, story, themes and atmosphere are impeccable to me. certain interactions caught me off-guard, in a good way, and i remember several story beats that floored me to the point of grinning at the screen. if this seems at all interesting to you, i highly recommend checking it out.

it does a great job earning the grimness and melancholy it likes to claim of the in-game profession; you genuinely feel as if you're constantly juggling your own survival, your personal ambitions, the will of your employer, and the imagined or explicit desires of the many people you have to interact with. money is always tight, your health is never full enough, your magic wanes too quickly... do you buy a weapon to defend yourself with, or an outfit that might permit you an audience with someone you need to know? do you sell the information to that person, or blackmail another? are you more intent to build yourself a better life upon your return, or find somewhere else to call home? the time limit is everpresent, and you can't do everything. there is a fishing mechanic, also. i will always look for more games like this. thank you very much.

Just a beautiful experience with a dreamy soundtrack and great writing.

Very fun and interesting! Has a good story. :)

Time catches up on you...

Well I have a library full of games I've never played but after a bad first try when I wasn't in the mood to read, I just sunk 60 hours of playtime into this game in 6 weeks, with 3 back-to-back playthroughs.

If you loved Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid you will love this. The music is great, the writing is SUPERB, and the game world is awesome and unique.

Beautiful. Does that seem like an odd way of describing a text-based game? It is a beautifully crafted, immersive world that will so vividly draw on your imagination you won't be able to help but craft a gorgeous world in your mind.

Your ability to craft a character by describing their emotions and motivations to others and then choosing to reinforce (or betray) that motivation with your actions is certainly not exclusive to text-based games, but I think the *reactions* in text are more telling of the care and detail the designers put into crafting the game. I was floored by the number of unique responses you can get from in-world characters by even slightly changing your interaction with them. The level of detail and nuance suggests this was crafted by people who loved their job and loved adding little details into even the smallest background character.

Even the little things, like the choice of font, or the change in sounds, as you choose your path was strangely comforting. And no matter what you do, it's a very inviting game even when dealing with hunting or destruction because it's a sort of timeless prettiness to it. Sometimes I forgot it wasn't taking place in old England or the American age of cowboys and would be reminded it had a distinct fantasy world element by the mention of some supernatural threat. That's not a critique by the way - it was inspiring so much of my imagination I was just mentally adding things to their world.

I think this will be a game people play to get through once because they'll be eager to know how it ends and then will return to from time to time when they want a play through of something that is warm, comforting, and familiar. It's one of those friendly and familiar story lines for a rainy night.

An incredible game. The art, music, writing and plot all come together beautifully to make something unique and inspiring.

Please give this game a try.

Lots of reading but if you're into that, the world building is great and the choices are engrossing.

Very solid and well made story game with an immersive world that's interesting to explore and filled with realistic characters that make your choices feel meaningful

One of the most interesting RPGs i played - great story, great characters, great writing. Everything was a pleasure to read, and the choices you make really matter.

great game - excellent writing and use of the renpy engine

Roadwarden is an excellent text based game about exploration and community. It is aesthetically simple, with some basic but effective tricks and a great soundtrack, but the writing is truly phenomenal. There are lots of different paths through the peninsula, and your adventure will be different based on them. There is replay value here if you try a new "class," and want to see the other endings.

However, keep in mind that this game is pretty short. My first playthrough took about 11 hours, and my second took 9. There's a lot of reading (nothing but reading, in fact), so if you aren't down for that, this isn't the game for you.

If you can get lost in a fantasy novel, really enjoy the freedom afforded by D&D, or just really loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, this game is for you.

i've been really impressed with the writing and world-building. exceeded my expectations, and well worth the price.

Incredibly well written game with innumerable ways to solve the various quests. I you love the idea of being the hero of your own novel, this game is for you, but if you hate reading this won't be a great fit. Highly, highly recommend.

i'm no good with words but this was beautiful, grim and a delight to play. this is definitely a comfort game, although beware of tears.

Fantastic story, amazing ambiance, addicting to find more and more parts of the story.

I don't often write reviews because it's not my thing but I happened upon reviews of other games I owned and the fact alone I showed an interest in seeing what others thought of Roadwarden speaks to something deep in me that connected to how I felt in my childhood with classic games like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario and the Halo: Combat Evolved.

I think that feeling, if I can describe it, is some kind of mix of wonder and exploration in a way so different from other games that is has no choice but to stand out among the many. Roadwarden gives us the experience of a solitude embodied in character while threading us along a story of consequence and community connections. I think that's what ties it to the other titles I've mentioned - you as the player are a part of and apart from the community in a way that grounds you to work you are doing to improve the lives of others and yourself.

I want more of this in some new game, and I want to be able to build my own homestead. Maybe grow a farm. Live a quite, peaceful life in a world fraught with many problems that can be soften by working with others.

I like the choose-your-own-adventure nature of the game, and the accomplishment summary at the end is good. Overall, a very good open-ended game.