Roadwarden

This seemed like a fun game and had good reviews so I gave it try....in the first scene you learn an army officer died while "trying to be saved by his boyfriend" and I'm like, that's cool, inclusion is cool. It's just a little detail to spice up the story. No big deal. Then at the first village, I ask the innkeeper "How are you?" His reply: "It's the town's law that I have to tell you that I'm a wife beater. My wife has left me. My daughter was taken away from me and is now being raised by another man. It is the best for her!" and I'm like bro, why would you respond to a stranger in such an odd way in your visual novel about being a roadwarden? I played a little farther on and noticed that every leader in the story is a woman and every man is portrayed as weak, cruel, dirty, and/or evil. To articulate clearly: this game takes a hard left turn into identity politics land and if it that's your cup of tea, then grab your crumpets and fill your cups. But for me, the writers tried too hard forcing their political views onto the reader and it distracts from the whole story.

It was my first text-based RPG. I liked it a lot. Don't expect a big adventure with great stakes. You are just a roadwarden who tries to figure out a wild land. The fun comes from slowly understanding the relationship between the inhabitants of the peninsula, and in some ways impact them (and you can impact them quite a lot, almost too much in my humble opinion!). There is a time-limit, which forces you to focus on some objectives. While it is frustrating and leave a somewhat bitter taste at the end of the adventure, this bitterness fits the theme perfectly: you're not this world's savior, you won't have the time to be everyone's friends, solve everyone's problem. It's tough, but made the adventure feel more real, and the choices more meaningful, i.e it definitely enhanced the experience for me. The writing is solid, solid enough for me to care for those characters that are never shown, and with whom I only interacted with text. The soundtrack is eerie and fitting.... all in all, the atmosphere is great and the story -while having no big twists- delivers on being down-to-earth and believable. I was really emotionally committed to the fate of the peninsula by the end of the adventure, and was really sad to leave it. I'm not sure about replayability: on one hand, I genuinely want to explore other choices and see their consequences. On the other hand, this would imply a lot of repetition, and going through the same texts... So all in all, an amazing experience. I wholeheartedly recommend it, though you must have understood from my review that it will not fit everyone's expectation. Just try out the demo and you'll know if the game is for you or not.

I enjoyed it a lot. Took easily two full days of play on easy to beat. Play on easy if you want most the story. Not very much difference playing different backgrounds i dont think, you will have to read 99% of the game over again.

I'm generally not a fan of games where you don't know where to go. I know there are people who love that kind of thing, but I prefer to have a clear idea of what I'm meant to be doing, and not too much crypticness about how to get there. I'm also not fond of time limits - I like to go as fast or as slow as I feel like. Roadwarden is an exception to all of that. The game plonks you down in an unmapped wilderness and tells you to go out there and see what you find. You have 40 days (this can be turned off but I recommend keeping it) and no idea where to go or what to do. The reason this works for me where it wouldn't in so many other games is because it's not being cryptic about your goal. It's not "there's something you need to do but we're not telling you what". It's just "wander around, see what you find, do some things if you want, and then leave". Also, because you know you'll have to go after 40 days, that frees you from the expectation of doing everything. You probably won't be able to do it all, so just do whatever catches your interest. It surprisingly liberating. That format alone wouldn't be enough though. Fortunately, Roadwarden is really well written (aside from some odd phrasing here and there) and very atmospheric. It's a game where you gradually come to feel almost at home in this place, and that's in no small part thanks to how well realised the setting is. It's a lot of text, and maybe that'll put you off. Not everyone is up for that much reading. I personally usually wouldn't go for something like this. And yet Roadwarden might be the best game I've played this year.

First and foremost, Roadwarden is a visual novel, most of what you're going to be doing is reading. If you can't put up with that, don't buy this game. Consequently, this will mostly be about writing. As a roadwarden your job is part hunter, trailblazer, and mailman. Your job is to keep the roads safe and prepare the peninsula for colonization by your masters in the merchant guild, go nuts. You have free reign to act (or not act) and the game itself never judges you for it. Characters rarely feel one dimensional and you really feel like you're getting tossed into the thick the intrigue from day one. Everyone of note has something they want, some kind of angle, and will try to play you, the errant spanner in the works, to do what they want done. That doesn't mean you're completely vulnerable though. Get information on something from everyone you can, compare what stories line up and don't, catch someone in a lie or fake buying it and screw over their plans at the last, worst second. No one person is solely evil, no one person completely good. Even the worst the peninsula has to offer believe in their work, or are just making decisions to get people through another winter. Even the moment to moment writing is handled with a loving care that punches above it's weight for worldbuilding and visuals. The result is writing that feels remarkably human, even realistic. Violence is also handled remarkably well, it's impactful, chaotic, and brutal. For context, my first warden was a fighter, and a damned good one, but i'll never forget the shock of him dying unceremoniously in the forest because I got complacent, or the hatred, indignation, and violation of getting beaten and tortured by a bastard goon that caught him in his sleep. The frailty of existence is front and center throughout the story. I'm not usually one to get attached to stories, but after 10-12 hours of playing, the hollow in my heart this game made damn near collapsed when the epilogue played out.