Wildermyth – PC Gamer’s RPG of 2021

With Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, and ATOM RPG: Trudograd, among others, this was a great year for RPGs. But, according to PC Gamer, it’s the narrative roguelike Wildermyth that deserves the title of the year’s best RPG. Here’s a quick snippet as to why:

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I don’t think any videogame has ever more successfully evoked the feel of a tabletop RPG. A few hours in Wildermyth is like a supercut of a fantastic year-long Dungeons & Dragons campaign. With the procedural systems as your dungeon master, you follow the lives and adventures of entire parties of heroes, each organically growing and developing in all sorts of unexpected directions. And they really are unexpected—while it’s perfectly possible for a warrior to just find a magic sword and kill a dragon with it, it’s equally likely they’ll be cursed to slowly transform into living crystal, or make a pact with an ancient tree, or upset a witch who turns their head into a raven’s.

They even age, fall in love, and have children; eventually they’ll retire, if they survive the adventurer’s life. They’re never really gone, though—your favourites become legacy heroes who can return rejuvenated in subsequent campaigns, like pulling out your favourite old, dog-eared character sheet for yet another dungeon run.