Here’s a fancy pants text-based RPG by Moral Anxiety Studio from Wrocław, Poland. It launched on PC in September 2022 and made its way over to Nintendo Switch in August 2025, too.

Think of it as an interactive novel, a bit like choose your own adventure book, where you pick narrative arcs and guide your mysterious loner through Medieval human settlements. All wrapped up with neat pixel art graphics and a moody soundtrack.

We’re on a Roadwarden to Nowhere

During our research for this review, we discovered a new word. Roadwarden belongs in the grimdark subgenre of sci-fi and fantasy fiction. The genre deals with bleak themes with amoral characters and dystopian concepts.

Its mood and style are quite similar to the phenomenal Disco Elysium (2019), one of the best ever indie games. And whilst not as good, this is still a mighty impressive piece of work.

Roadwarden is, essentially, a short story. There’s a lot of reading to do, so it plays out over about 10 hours or so (or longer, if you’re a slow reader, dumbass). And kind of like text-based adventures of yesteryear, players must put narrative options to guide the Roadwarden toward his/her fate.

You’re hired by merchants to protect the lands of a remote peninsula, all with the goal of ensuring the safe passage of trade. We’ll leave off spoilers from here, but it’s fair to say things get increasingly tense and dramatic. Especially as you must manage the RPG elements, your character’s survival, and a 40-day time limit to get the job done.

Here it is in action. Again, an interactive novel, so your best experience of it will be reading/playing it. Not watching it.

So, yeah, as with any book the more time you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Its fantasy setting is very well realised, with some great pixel art, and the store and interactive elements are very well managed.

It’s like a more fully realised version of Choice of Robots (2014), the 300,000 word text adventure by Kevin Gold. But… Roadwarden has more pictures! Hurray.

The game also packs in a great little score by composer Nicholas Roder. This plays along whilst you play, really help to immerse you into the story.

These are great guitar-driven pieces and set a fabulous atmosphere. Reading with music? Yes, it can work pretty well.

It’s all less than £10 and provides a neat little, fun, immersive time of it. It’s more complex than just reading, but minimalistic enough to still be a treat to enjoy.

Well worth your time. Plus, when you finish it, you can claim you’ve read a book!