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RPG

Fantasy Life i studio announces free DLC as the “slow-life RPG” sequel gets off to a flying start

by admin May 23, 2025

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has had an unexpectedly strong start for a sequel to a fairly obscure 13-year Nintendo DS game. And developer Level 5 has now thanked fans for their enthusiasm, pledging to release free DLC in response to “popular demand”.

The Girl Who Steals Time, for context, is a sequel to Level 5’s Fantasy Life – a sort of job-focussed mash-mash of life sim and RPG – which enjoyed modest critical and commercial success when it launched for Nintendo DS back in 2012. Eurogamer’s celebrated its “abundance of features” in our 6/10 review at the time, but noted the result was often “less than the sum of its parts”.

But in this post-Stardew Valley world – where you can’t watch an indie showcase without seeing a dozen new village sims jostling for attention – the newly released Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals seems to resonated with audiences. It’s garnered a positive early critical reception and even surpassed 45K concurrents on its first day on Steam (that’s more than Doom: The Dark Ages managed) – and Level 5 is now celebrating its launch with news of more to come.

Fantasy Life i – features trailer.Watch on YouTube

“In response to the positive reception from players around the world,” it wrote in a message on its website (via Google Translate), “we have decided to release free DLC that will ‘update the world’… so that players can continue to enjoy the game for a long time to come.”

Level 5 hasn’t shared much in the way of specifics, but there’s talk of new recipes and “high-rarity weapons” that can be acquired though dungeons and “other methods”. The studio says it’s working to release the DLC “as soon as possible”, and will share more details at a later date. And it sounds like there’s more on the way; “We plan to continue updating the game,” it adds, “so that you can enjoy the world of Fantasy Life i for longer and more comfortably.”

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is available now on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Switch, with a Switch 2 version coming later this year.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

EA never grasped Dragon Age’s value as an RPG, says Inquisition writer

by admin May 23, 2025

Summerfall Studios co-founder and former Dragon Age writer David Gaider has been reflecting, not for the first time, on his career at BioWare under EA. In a brisk recap of a decade-and-change of sequels, changes of direction, and mid-project reboots, he sums up EA’s difficulty with Dragon Age as basically one of having no real faith in the wide appeal of role-playing games.

“In many ways, Dragon Age was, I think, not a good match for EA,” Gaider explained, in a new interview with PCGamesN. “They never really knew what to make of it, or what to do with it. The expectation was always that it wouldn’t do well, and when it did do well, it took people by surprise.”

EA were far more convinced by sci-fi stablemate Mass Effect, Gaider went on, despite Mass Effect sporadically falling short of expectations. “By comparison, Mass Effect was slick and it was action-driven and very much up EA’s alley, so they always expected that it should do better, and every time it didn’t, it got excuses like ‘oh they released in the wrong timeframe, or X, Y, and Z.’

“The idea was that the potential for Mass Effect was more – it could get the action audience as well as the RPG audience,” he said. “It wasn’t until Mass Effect 3 that they started to realize that ‘no, there’s an action RPG audience, like a crossover,’ but you don’t just get both audiences together.”

Last year’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard certainly suggests a level of hesitancy about the value of Dragon Age as a ‘pure’ role-playing game. Its development was, by most accounts, hellish: originally pitched as another narrative-led RPG, The Veilguard was re-envisaged as a live service multiplayer offering, as was the style at the time, then rebooted as a single player action-RPG in light of Anthem’s commercial failure.

Gaider – who left BioWare after working on Dragon Age: Inquisition, my beloved – has yet to play The Veilguard, having poured so much of himself into Dragon Age that he feels uneasy about it evolving without him. He’s also wary of judging its creators, many of whom have been laid off or relocated after EA declared The Veilguard a disappointment. But he does regard the game as symptomatic of EA’s on-going mistrust toward Dragon Age and role-playing.

“Even though Dragon Age only catered to the RPG audience – at least initially – [EA] kept wanting it to move into the action space as well – and maybe by Veilguard it has,” he went on. “I think their idea was that the ‘cap’ on the RPG audience was only so big. Then Baldur’s Gate 3 comes along and proves no, it’s possible that if you lean into what a genre does really well, you can grow the audience, as it turns out.”

Gaider would have liked EA and BioWare to similarly “double down on the choice-driven narrative, double down on the production value, like the presentation of the characters and the cinematics and dialogs, and just take it to the extent where quality is the watchword.” But as he concludes, it’s hard to imagine a publicly traded company like EA doing what Larian did with BG3, because the two “live on two different planets”.

It’s not clear what the future holds for Dragon Age. Or indeed BioWare, who have been stripped down to a core team currently working on Mass Effect 5.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Minecraft Is Getting A D&D-Style Tabletop RPG – Preorder The Adventure Book

by admin May 23, 2025

Soon there will be a new way to interact with the world of Minecraft. The No. 1 best-selling game of all time is getting its own pen-and-paper RPG. Slated to release July 8, Minecraft: Roll for Adventure – The Temple of the Charged Creeper is a hardcover gamebook that will introduce players to the grand universe of tabletop RPGs. Amazon is offering a 20% preorder discount that drops the price of the budget-friendly gamebook to only $16.

While Roll for Adventure sounds like one of the cooler tabletop Minecraft experiences released since the video game debuted back in 2011, it’s far from the only one. Over the years, Minecraft has been turned into a variety of popular board and card games. In fact, one of the best Minecraft board games, Builders and Biomes, is getting a Junior version geared toward younger fans on August 1.

We’ve rounded up all of the notable Minecraft tabletop games you can buy now. After reading about the games, you can then check out the sprawling universe of Minecraft novels, comic books, and reference books at the bottom of this story. The list includes several discounted Minecraft novel box sets and exciting upcoming releases such as Minecraft: The Ultimate Mobstopper’s Collection Gift Box.

$16 (was $20) | Releases July 8

This 224-page hardcover gamebook sees you setting out on adventure across the Overworld. You’re tasked with tracking down Illagers who have ransacked a nearby town–and you’ll encounter plenty of challenges along the way. Part Minecraft, part Dungeons & Dragons, it looks like a fun game for both fans of the games and tabletop enthusiasts.

Inside the book you’ll find a set of rules to guide your journey, a bestiary full of enemy details, and a removable character sheet to track your progress. There are also four dice–which you’ll need to perform various actions and fend off foes.

The author, Matt Forbeck, has previously worked on popular books like Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest and Halo: Bad Blood, so expect this to be of high quality and packed with engaging decisions that change the course of the narrative.

Minecraft: Roll for Adventure is recommended for players ages 10 and up.

$25 | Releases August 1

A standard version of Minecraft: Builders and Biomes is currently available for $34 (was $40), but this Junior edition offers a streamlined alternative for younger players. Designed for kids 5 and up and with support for up to 4 players, you’ll work together to build a farm. You’ll need to collect various blocks and play them in the right order to have the best chance at success, and with 27 wooden blocks, a pickaxe and shovel accessories, and a chance to encounter familiar faces from the game, it looks like a fun spin-off from the original.

From Portal Dash to the Explorers Card Game:

Minecraft is no stranger to the world of board and card games. And beyond the two upcoming games above, there are plenty of others you can enjoy right now. Portal Dash is one of the most popular options–currently on sale for $30 (was $40), it sees you and up to three other players attempting to escape the Nether. You’ll gather powerful equipment as you navigate its deadly landscape, but you’ll also be pitted against increasingly dangerous foes, making it important to plan ahead. There’s also a Mattel Minecraft Card Game available for $21, where you’ll be mining for Resource Cards before using them to earn points via crafting.

A different type of card game, Minecraft Explorers, is a cooperative game for up to 4 players. Working together, you’ll attempt to discover various treasures and valuable resources without falling prey to the world’s many monsters. With a deck of colorful cards and easy to learn rules, it’s a fun choice for most fans. Other highlights include a Magnetic Travel Puzzle with 40 brain-busting challenges and a premium Minecraft Chess Set featuring blocky pieces inspired by characters from the game.

Minecraft: Roll for Adventure – The Temple of the Charged Creeper

Minecraft Book Box Sets

While Minecraft: Roll for Adventure – The Temple of the Charged Creeper looks like a fun adventure for fans of the game, there are plenty of Minecraft books that offer more traditional reading experiences. We’ve broken them out into sections below, starting with book box sets.

The box sets in the list below run the gamut from prose novels and graphic novels to reference book collections and the aforementioned Mobspotter’s Collection Gift Box, which includes an encyclopedia, a drawing guide, an interactive game where you hunt for zombies, and a kit to make your own zombie figure.

Minecraft: The Ultimate Mobspotter’s Collection Gift Box

Minecraft Graphic Novels (Paperback)

There are nine Minecraft graphic novels available now, six of which are collected in the two box sets mentioned above. The latest Minecraft graphic novel, Out of Order Volume 1, released on March 25.

Minecraft Novel Series

The Stonesword and Woodsword Chronicles box sets listed above were written for younger Minecraft fans (elementary to middle grade). There’s also a long-running series of Minecraft novels for young adult (and older) readers. Many of the 22 prose novels released so far are standalone stories, though some have received sequels or are loosely connected. You don’t have to start with the first book, but we’d recommend it anyway, because The Island was written by World War Z author Max Brooks. If you enjoy The Island, you should then check out The Mountain and The Village, both of which were written by Brooks as well.

All of the novels are available in hardcover and most have been published in paperback, too. In some cases, the hardcover is actually cheaper than the paperback, so we’ve included both editions in the chronological list below.

Minecraft Non-Fiction: Reference Books, Guides, Encyclopedias, and More

A Minecraft Movie: From Block to Big Screen

Lastly, check out the list below for a wide assortment of Minecraft guides, reference books, art books, and more. Notable new and upcoming releases include A Minecraft Movie: From Block to Big Screen, a behind-the-scenes look at the hit adaptation, and the Minecraft Official Blocks Guide, which releases October 14.

If you haven’t preordered a copy of A Minecraft Movie, the Limited Edition 4K Steelbook is available for $38 at Amazon. Over at Walmart, you can buy an exclusive Blu-ray edition with packaging that can be folded into a Crafting Table display model. A Minecraft Movie releases on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on June 24.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Here’s a new goblin booter RPG inspired by Dishonored and Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic

by admin May 23, 2025

Alkahest looks very good. Emphasis on ‘looks’ because both trailers released so far have been very scripted. Also, emphasis on ‘good’ because you get to bully goblins with your feet. It’s an open world RPG boasting a combat sandbox full of the sort of reactive flourishes you might find in an immersive sim. Crucially for fans of Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic (I’ve seen the words “spiritual successor” floating about, although not from the devs themselves) one of those touches is a boot. Here’s the boot in action:

Watch on YouTube

You seem to have an archer mate, off screen, that you can button-tell to shoot at interactive objects and goblins. We first see this when our character slides up to a cargo lift, then gets catapulted upward when an arrow flies in from nowhere and severs the rope. They then grab a barrel mid-air, before falling back down and braining a goblin with it. I would be very surprised if this is unsynced, impromptu barrel-grabbing. There’s probably a prompt that says ‘grab barrel’, if that. I’d also be a little shocked if the barrel hitting animation transitions into the fire throwing animation, then into the sword fighting animation, anywhere near that smoothly. Still, wishful stitching or no, someone had to animate all that, and they did a fine job.

As for a bit of context for what the game’s like outside of combat, here’s a trailer from last year:

Watch on YouTube

Plenty of fun stuff in there. Weapon throwing. Wood kicking. Spiky wall advantage taking. Cart skitching. We shoot some oil barrels then light an arrow on fire at one point. We drink a potion then throw the bottle at a goblin, annoying him for just long enough to slip an axe into his neck. Where the Dishonored influence becomes more apparent – and also presumably where that name comes from – is mixing and using a metal-heating substance to weaken an iron door before smashing through. Again, if this can be used to eg: render goblin weapons into useless melting slag-pops, rather than just being a specific door-based contextual action, I’ll be surprised. Happy, but surprised.

Pre-rendered trailers are flaky, impenetrable things – much like armoured croissants – but the game that’s being advertised here does look quite special, assuming it actually exists in any recognisable form. Also, it’s nice to see all those Moria goblins getting work after that damning plot hole was discovered in Lord Of The Rings. There’s no release date as yet, but you can suspiciously examine Alkahest on Steam here.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Warhammer 40K unveils Boltgun 2, tactical RPG Dark Heresy, and, yes, a free typing game

by admin May 22, 2025

It’s been a busy day in the grimdark world of Warhammer 40K, thanks to its latest video game focused Warhammer Skulls showcase. Not only have we learned a couple of classics getting a spruce-up, there’s brand-new stuff coming too, including a Boltgun sequel, new tactical RPG Dark Heresy, plus a smattering of fresh DLC.

Warhammer 40K: Boltgun 2, which seems as good a place as any to start, is exactly what it sounds like – a follow-up to developer Auroch Digital’s acclaimed 2023 retro shooter Boltgun. Details are relatively limited at present, but it’ll pick up immediately after the events of the first game, and offer another helping of old-school-inspired FPS action over the course of its branching single-player campaign. There’s talk of new locations – “from the colossal heights of a hive city to the impenetrable mangrove swamps of a jungle” – plus new weapons and never-before-seen foes, including the ferocious Bloodletters and their daemonic Juggernauts.

Warhammer 40K Boltgun 2 teaser trailer.Watch on YouTube

All that’s coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC sometime in 2026. However! There’s an extra – and more immediate – treat for Boltgun fans in the form of Boltgun: Words of Vengeance. This “first person typer” twist on the retro shooter – in which players must deploy their QWERTY skills for maximum carnage – is entirely free and available to download on Steam today.

Elsewhere in the gloomy world of Warhammer 40K, developer Owlcat has announced Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy, a “narrative-driven tactical RPG” set against the backdrop of the Noctis Aeterna and the mystery of the Tyrant Star. “Players will lead a warband of diverse companions in a desperate battle against heresy and corruption,” the studio explains, “from loyal Imperial subjects, such as a veteran Guardsman from the death world of Catachan, to nefarious xenos, including a bird-like Kroot mercenary.”

Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy announcement trailer.Watch on YouTube

There’s talk of full voice acting, “intricate investigations”, turn-based combat, and “choices that carry grave consequences”, all said to build on the ideas introduced in Owlcat’s Rogue Trader. And if that sounds intriguing, Dark Heresy is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC (via Steam, GOG, and Epic) at some currently undisclosed future point.

Speaking of Rogue Trader, Owlcat has also announced a 24th June release date for the game’s second expansion, Lex Imperialis. This introduces a faction of “incorruptible enforcers” known as the Adeptus Arbites, plus a new companion – Solomorne Anthar – across its 15-hour storyline. Additionally, the studio has revealed it’s working on a Season Pass 2 for Rogue Trader, bundling together an appearance customisation pack and two more 15-hour expansions – each featuring new quests and a new companion. The first of these expansions takes players to a Necron vault curated by Trazyn the Infinite, where they’ll encounter ancient guardians and uncover relics relating to the Von Valancius legacy. The second new expansion promises a “descent into madness and mystery” as they explore a “surreal” voidship graveyard.

Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader – Lex Imperialis release date trailerWatch on YouTube

And while we’re on the subject of DLC, there’s one last bit of business to discuss in the form of Space Marine 2’s new Siege mode. This “endless” PvE mode for the acclaimed shooter unfolds on Kadaku, where three players must survive against ever-more-deadly waves of Tyranid and Chaos as they attempt to defend an Imperial fortress. It’ll be playable on Steam via developer Saber Interactive’s Public Test Server starting 4th June, and it gets its full release across all platforms as part of a free update on 26th June.

Space Marine 2 – Siege Mode teaser trailer.Watch on YouTube

All of which pretty much covers the big Warhammer 40K news, but it’s probably also worth mentioning there are currently significant discounts across a huge number of Warhammer games on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC as part of today’s Warhammer Day celebrations.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Dreamspring is an open world RPG inspired by Morrowind and King’s Field

by admin May 22, 2025

The Steam trailer for open world RPG Dreamspring contains: shooting spiders with a revolver. Hanging out near a green ocean. Fighting green skeletons. Most curiously, it features an armoured knight convulsing on a bed as if being shocked, from the inside, by some sort of magical electricity disease. Did this knight eat an entire pack of bad batteries? Do batteries even exist in this world, described as “a realm in ruins…beneath a twilight sky”. It’s a damn hell ass bum mystery, and mystery is exactly what I want from a game that lists both Morrowind and King’s Field as influences.

Watch on YouTube

“As a spellsword gunslinger,” – truly, the millionaire astronaut cowboy DJ of RPG classes – “you’ll explore ethereal landscapes shrouded in twilight, battle fearsome creatures, and uncover ancient secrets. Explore the dying Kingdom of Mortis and its different realms in first person action combat, in a world mixed with retro and vaporwave aesthetics”.

Despite the FromSoft influence, Dreamspring is aiming to be “a less punishing type of Souls/Scrolls-like game,” which I reckon is something that gets more important the bigger your world is. Otherwise, it looks to have most of the stuff you’d expect – branching dialogue, branching storyline, branching trees with branches branching toward an uncaring skyline, all the classics. It’s in early access at the moment, with the “core loop” apparently done, and the main quest and world still being worked on.

There’s no demo, although developer Billyfighter’s previous game Necroslayer is roughly the price of Greggs’ bake at the moment. Will you feel good after playing it? I can’t say. But you will likely feel better than after eating a Greggs’ bake.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

A studio gutted by Embracer have come back to life and are working on a new RPG

by admin May 21, 2025

One of the many game studios smashed to pieces by Embracer Group has come back to life. Campfire Cabal, which was seemingly shut down in 2023 as part of their parent corporation’s scorched earth “restructuring” policy, have crawled out of the grave to announce they’re still around and, in fact, “never stopped working”. They’ve been making a new game in the Expeditions series of historical RPGs, and have been given “the green light to scale back up and transition into full production.”

“We are finally ready to reveal that Campfire Cabal was never shut down,” say the studio in a post on their website. What happened, they say, is that the THQ-owned studio were ordered to close by Embracer two years ago. But some agreement was reached to keep the company going with a reduced headcount, and they instead cut an unknown number of employees from payroll.

“Though we did have to say goodbye to many of our colleagues, the studio survived and a compact team continued the project we had started in 2022. At the end of March of 2025, we received the green light to scale back up and transition into full production.”

That project is a new game in the Expeditions series of RPGs, which includes the classical centurion stomping of Expeditions: Rome, the top-down shield-battering of Expeditions: Viking, and gunpowdery land-grabbing of Expeditions: Conquistador. The studio aren’t saying much more about the new game, though. Only that it’ll be “set in a new period of our history and in a new part of the world for the series”. Expeditions: Mongol, anyone? Expeditions: Pirate? Expeditions: Islamic Golden Age? I guess we’ll find out.

Expeditions: Rome had some repetitive quirks but was a “seriously good – and lovingly detailed – romp through centurion times,” said Nate in our review. And Expeditions: Conquistador was called “very fine” by Adam, who wrote in his review that some parts were a chore, but “the focus on stories and characters means that there is almost always at least one interesting plot on the boil”.

You should know, however, that Campfire Cabal aren’t the original studio who made the older Expeditions games. That would be Logic Artists, who were subsumed and digested by blockchain bullshit peddlars Dynasty Studios. But the Cabal have since become custodians of the series under rights-holders THQ. As with many creative studios, it’s a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation, somewhat complicated by a round of layoffs and this subsequent reappearance. We’ll have to wait and see how the next entry carries the torch.

Even if you aren’t that interested in the RPGs, the “revival” of a seemingly shuttered studio is interesting in a wider sense. It could be seen as a hopeful sprout of green emerging from a blackened earth laid bare by years of seemingly endless layoffs. Or it could simply be the re-emergence of a scarred and injured body from a bloody-watered moat, a studio bravely limping on in spite of the brutal overlord that threw them in there, alongside a bunch of other bodies.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Campfire Cabal "Sunstone Teaser" image - hand-drawn tall ship in high seas

Product Reviews

THQ Nordic studio that was set to be closed in 2023 somehow escaped the Embracer death spiral and is now working on a new RPG

by admin May 20, 2025

This is a bit of a weird one: Two years after announcing its planned closure in the aftermath of the Embracer Group’s $2 billion implosion, Campfire Cabal revealed today that it “was never shut down” at all, and that it is in fact working on a new addition to the Expeditions series of historical RPGs.

“If you follow the insider news, you are aware that it’s been a rough couple of years in the game industry,” the studio wrote. “Investment dried up, studios shut down, countless developers lost their jobs, and games were cancelled left and right.”

That’s putting it mildly. A quick catch-up on how we got here: Campfire Cabal was founded in September 2022 under Embracer’s THQ Nordic label to “focus on high-quality, narrative-driven RPGs.” But less than a year later a massive investment deal fell through at the last minute, and Embracer’s wings were suddenly and brutally clipped: Hundreds of people were laid off (although none of the executives responsible for the mess, of course) and numerous studios closed, including—apparently—Campfire Cabal.

Fancy a Witcher 3 10th anniversary playthrough with extra “classic RPG feel”? Well, this new mod gives it a totally revamped Witcher 1-style skill system

by admin May 19, 2025

In case you missed it, The Witcher 3 is now a decade old. We’re all knee-deep in replays of old games right now, but if all the TW3 anniversary chat has you thinking about firing it up again, a new mod looks like it’ll offer an interesting twist for folks looking forward to The Witcher Remake.

After all, how best to switcher up your Witcher experience than swapping one Witcher skill system for a different Witcher skill system from an older Witcher game. That way, you can see Witcher is better. All right, I’ll stop mucking about.

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The mod is Gerwant30’s Witcher 1 talent trees remake for The Witcher 3, with its creator having previously scored second place on one of CD Projekt’s REDkit modding contests with a work that lets you explore a bit of Cintra.

Now, as part of their ongoing “Tales of the Witcher” project, they’ve had a go at adding their own version of first Witcher game’s skill system into TW3, with the goal of giving you “a lot more control” over Geralt’s development via “13 new talent trees and over 200 new skills”. “This mod attempts to recreate that feeling and philosophy within The Witcher 3,” Gerwant30 explained, “replacing the standard skill trees with a more layered and, hopefully, rewarding progression system.”

Watch on YouTube

As you can see in the showcase video above, the mod sees you work up and earn bronze, silver, and gold talents across trees dedicated to the likes of strength and dexterity as you level up. You’ll start off by earning bronzes early-game, then gradually move on the silvers and golds as you get more proficient and gradually morph into a master witcher.

There are four main skill trees including the two mentioned earlier, each with 17 skills, but that’s far from it. The five Witcher signs each have their own 18 skill strong tree “allowing for deep specialization”, and there are four combat skill trees aimed at “strong” and “fast” attacks with your steel and silver blades.

“Your power comes mostly from how you build your character,” the modder writes, “Skills, talents, and preparation define your strength, equipment statistics are less important.” Certainly a lot to tweak if you’re a fan of in-depth build engineering, though it’s worth noting that this being a beta, a fair amount of the skills and features are still very much a work-in-progress.

It’s also worth noting that Gerwant30’s designed the mod to work exclusively with “a fresh new game in the base version of The Witcher 3 only”, with them being very clear that existing saves and standalone playthroughs of the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine DLC won’t work as intended. They also intend for it to be used with another mod, SkylineR390’s ‘Alchemy’, so you’ll need to grab that if you fancy giving this skill tree mod a go.

PsychoCaki’s ‘SCAAR’ and a camera mod like TheMenxceX and ElementaryLewis’ ‘Immersive Camera for Next Gen’ are also on Gerwant30’s recommended list.

Did you prefer the first Witcher game’s more old-school approach to skills, or is how TW3 does things second nature at this point and not something you’d want to tweak? Let us know below!

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May 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Alternate between 14 lives in Level-5’s latest open world fantasy RPG, out on PC this week

by admin May 19, 2025

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a “Slow Life RPG” in which you live out 14 different lives in… hold on, record scratch and/or Gru’s Plan fourth panel – let me run that premise by myself again. I have to live 14 different lives? How is that “slow”? I have a hard enough time keeping up with one life in the amateurishly designed role-playing game we call reality, with its saddening shortage of rideable dragons.

Ah, but of course developers Level-5 are merely being cute with their framing. By “lives” they really mean classes or character jobs. In this blend of open world boglin basher and island town-builder, you will switch lives like you’re, well, exactly like you’re putting on different coats and hats, going by the trailer. Those 14 lives are split between three self-explanatory categories: under Gathering Lives we find farming and fishing, while Crafting Lives include blacksmithing, alchemy and such, and Combat Lives are all about ending them.

Watch on YouTube

The game launches this week, as detailed on Steam. We haven’t covered it before, and I’m not aware that anybody currently employed at the Treehouse has played the previous instalment on 3DS. I do, however, have many fond memories of Level-5’s older RPGs – Dark Cloud and Chronicle, Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch, and let’s not forget Dragon Quest VIII. Still the Dragon Quest to beat, for my onions. Professor Layton? I’m afraid I don’t know him. Did they consult with him on Jeanne D’Arc?

In any case, Fantasy Life i seems as bright and burgeoning and basically happy to exist as any of those games – so chipper and sparkling that I’m willing to forgo murdering the studio leadership for putting that lowercase “i” in the title.

The premise is that you’re part of an archaeological expedition who discover bits of fossilised dragon on an island. In the process, you also find a portal to the distant past that allows you to unravel the mystery of the island’s downfall.

Over the course of the game, you will alternate between roaming the monster-addled continents of yore and terraforming the island in the present, adding houses and decorations and terrain fixtures such as rivers. It’s an Animal Crossing game with its foot stuck in Dragon Quest Heroes. There is talk of saving the world, but it sounds like that comes a very distant second to choosing the wallpaper.

Look out for the game on 21st May. Given the multiple Lives framing, the obvious thing it’s missing is an introspective spiral akin to the tawdry soap opera that is The Alters, in which one man clones himself in order to operate a huge rolling spacebase. If I actually had 14 different lives at my disposal, I guarantee you there would be a pecking order with the Cook at the top of it.

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May 19, 2025 0 comments