Family Man, the Breaking Bad-like blocky RPG, is out now

Choices in RPGs tend to have far-reaching consequences, but what if your decisions hit a little closer to home? That's the premise of Family Man, a blocky RPG where your choices will affect your family and town, for good or ill, as you try to rustle up enough cash to pay back the mob.

Five years after development started, the game has just been released on Steam, along with a launch trailer showing how far it's progressed since we first got a glimpse of it back in 2018. You'll take on "dozens of missions" in the pleasant-seeming town of Riverport, and earn money legally, or not so legally, as you attempt to pay off your debt in the three weeks before the mob will start, probably, breaking blocky legs. The store page elaborates:

"Every decision you make affects everyone around you. The neighborhood will blossom or perish under the weight of your decisions, while the path you choose may lead to your household becoming stronger than ever... or the breakdown of your marriage and relationship with your child."

It sounds like a similar tightrope to the one walked by Walter White in Breaking Bad, only, this time, we're able to steer the story ourselves, towards "multiple" endings drawing on those moral choices. (Thanks, Blue.)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.