Roadwarden's demo lets you test its cool attitude-driven conversation system

RPGs shouldn't have to focus on combat, shouldn't have to even feature it, and an upcoming example of the latter is intriguing text-based RPG Roadwarden. In it, you play as a sort of highway defender, protecting the roads from hostile creatures and the resurrected dead. It's a fantasy world brought to life with environmental pixel art, but mainly with big giant globs of narration and dialogue.

Think Dragon Age 2's earnest, nasty or sarcastic responses, but with more variety, and with your behaviour being set for the rest of the conversation. It makes more sense, after all, for someone to be pleasant or rude for the entirety of a conversation, rather than to flit wildly between approaches.

While it only comprises a demo at the moment, I'm told that the full game should be released sometime in the first half of 2020. In the meantime, there's a nice chunk of fantasy questing on offer here. Just be sure to bring your reading glasses.

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

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.