Here we are again with my regular roundup of new releases and recommendations on what to play if you’re looking to dive into a new turn-based RPG. Aside from a few new demos, this week doesn’t bring any major launches, so I took a look at several noteworthy titles released during the first half of 2026.
There’s a good chance some of these flew under your radar, making this recap the perfect opportunity to catch up. I’m sure you’ll find at least one game here that’s worth adding to your backlog.
Banquet for Fools
- Developer: Hannah and Joseph Games
- Platforms: PC
- Release Date: March 5, 2026
- Steam Page
Banquet for Fools is the mechanical outlier in this week’s selection, since its combat runs in real time, but it’s so good that it deserves a place in my recap. It is an open-world, party-based RPG set on the island of Invimona, where four generated guards investigate the disappearance of an entire farming settlement.
Character attributes influence dialogue choices and relationships, while navigation must be handled without an automatic compass or conventional quest log. Directions, clues, and written scrolls are meant to be read, so have a pen and paper with you.
Combat resembles an isometric brawler, but its action-bar system gives players time to pause through the “combat dome,” select a target, and issue a command.
You directly control one guard while the rest of the party fights independently, although leadership can be switched at any time and companions can be called into support attacks or coordinated Rally strikes. Weapon skills, armor training, pagan magic, music, animal binding, and rogue abilities all provide different development paths, with frequently used skills receiving additional bonuses.
Tattered Banners (Demo)
- Developer: CookieByte Entertainment
- Platforms: PC
- Demo Release Date: July 9, 2026
- Early Access Release: Q4 2026
- Steam Page
One of the most interesting new demos of the week belongs to Tattered Banners, a turn-based mercenary RPG set in a medieval-fantasy world.
Cities grow, decline, and compete for influence while noble families pursue their own agendas. Player actions can interfere with that simulation in numerous ways: caravans can be raided, guards bribed, wells poisoned, farms burned, and castles besieged. Destroying a farm, for example, can contribute to famine, refugees, and stronger bandit groups elsewhere in the region.
The current demo can be played for up to three hours and includes several improvements over the earlier playtest.
Unit backgrounds and specializations have been expanded, equipment can carry rarity modifiers, character presentation has received new rendered portraits and initial customization options, and general performance has been improved.
Battles range from caravan escorts and nighttime sabotage to larger assaults, while progression gradually unlocks new ways to manipulate the world. It should offer a much clearer picture of what CookieByte is preparing for the Q4 Early Access launch.
Legends of the Round Table
- Developer: Artifice Studio
- Platform: PC
- Release Date: March 31, 2026
- Steam Page
Few RPGs released this year look quite like Legends of the Round Table. Artifice Studio adapted Arthurian stories into a narrative and strategic RPG presented through artwork inspired by 13th-century illuminated manuscripts.
The environments were hand-drawn using techniques, dyes, and colors associated with medieval artwork, while the soundtrack incorporates period instruments and compositions. Decisions involving mercy, punishment, romance, and duty influence both a knight’s honor and the future condition of the kingdom.
Its turn-based encounters introduce mounted lance charges, honorable duels, prisoners who can be held for ransom, and squires capable of changing a knight’s equipment during combat.
Losses are permanent, making the management layer just as important as individual battles. More than a dozen Arthurian knights can be recruited, assigned to quests, and considered for seats at the Round Table. Their traits, personal ambitions, relationships, injuries, aging, and eventual deaths shape the campaign, while magical cards provide powerful options that must be spent at the right moment.
Legends of Starkadia
- Developer: Doom Turtle
- Platform: PC
- Release Date: July 7, 2026
- Steam Page
After appearing in an earlier roundup as a demo, Legends of Starkadia has now received its free Steam release.
The story follows a bored teenager from Earth who is accidentally transported into the Starkadian Empire and dragged into an interdimensional conflict. Battles use party-based turns combined with timed inputs for attacking and defending, bringing an active element to otherwise traditional command selection. The wider design includes twelve unlockable characters, each carrying different attributes and combat skills.
There is, however, an important limitation to understand before starting. The version currently available covers only Scrap World, the first of the planned planets, and the developer estimates that it lasts approximately two hours.
Doom Turtle has written the wider story, which is intended to span eleven planets, but that content has not yet been developed. It is therefore better viewed as a free opening chapter or proof of concept rather than the completed interplanetary RPG suggested by the broader premise.
THYSIASTERY
- Developer: DIRGA
- Platform: PC
- Release Date: March 9, 2026
- Steam Page
THYSIASTERY goes straight for the atmosphere of classic first-person dungeon crawlers, placing a party of Brand-bearers inside an enormous and deeply unsettling Labyrinth.
Exploration uses grid-based movement and a limited-color visual style, but the locations extend beyond standard stone corridors. Buried forests, underwater cities, strange artifacts, and characters trapped within the Labyrinth all appear as the party searches for an escape and gradually learns what drew them there.
The structure also borrows heavily from traditional roguelikes. Areas are procedurally generated, adventurers can be randomly created, and death is permanent. Turn-based encounters reward exploiting weaknesses and favorable probabilities, although enemies can take advantage of the same vulnerabilities.
Characters discover skills through exploration and combat, then pass some of that knowledge to other party members.
Cosmos Point
- Developer: Anatoliy Sidorov
- Platform: PC
- Release Date: April 21, 2026
- Steam Page
One of my favorites of this round-up is for sure Cosmos Point. It takes the basic loop of an extraction shooter and rebuilds it as a turn-based tactical game.
Before deploying, players equip a squad with weapons, armor, ammunition, backpacks, grenades, and specialized devices. Equipment can also be collected from locations or defeated opponents and changed directly during a battle, allowing a fighter’s role to shift according to what the squad discovers. Remembering ammunition is especially important, since a powerful weapon is useless once its magazine runs dry.
A dead operative leaves equipment behind, creating the difficult choice of recovering valuable gear or preserving the surviving squad members. Backpack space is deliberately restricted, so every object extracted from the mission competes for room.
Recovered materials can then be used to expand the space station, improve storage, craft items, customize weapons, and open additional locations within the surrounding ship graveyard. Progress, therefore, depends as much on knowing when to leave as it does on winning individual firefights.
HEXCRAWL (E.A.)
- Developer: Polymorph Self
- Platform: PC
- Early Access Release Date: July 10, 2026
- Steam Page
HEXCRAWL is the newest launch in today’s roundup and approaches exploration one dangerous tile at a time. Its world is procedurally generated across more than twenty terrain types, with movement affected by weather, time, hunger, and the supplies being carried.
Each hex can contain combat, ruins, settlements, landmarks, nonviolent encounters, or something capable of ending the journey immediately. There is no guaranteed safe path, so the decision to advance, retreat, or divert toward possible shelter becomes part of the strategy.
Character power does not come from conventional levels. Weapons, armor, consumables, trinkets, temporary blessings, and lingering curses define the current build, while limited inventory capacity prevents players from carrying everything they find.
The Early Access version already includes settlements, shops, crafting disciplines, bounty boards, several character Callings, procedural maps, and explorable delves containing traps, locks, and stealth mechanics. It remains an open-ended sandbox without a fixed finale, however, and the developer warns that balance changes and rough edges should still be expected.
Whispers of the Eyeless
- Developers: Venris, Evil Gingerbread Studio
- Platform: PC
- Full Release Date: March 17, 2026
- Steam Page
Most RPGs cast you as the person trying to stop a dangerous cult. Whispers of the Eyeless puts you in charge of one instead. As the First Prophet, players attempt to awaken the Dead Gods of Wrath, Desire, and Madness beneath the decaying city of Aranthor.
Followers can be recruited and trained before being assigned to missions involving rival factions, resources, and the spread of influence. Rituals provide divine advantages, but increasing the cult’s visibility also brings greater scrutiny and the possibility of betrayal.
Combat uses a turn-based auto-battler structure in which preparation and ability timing matter. Calling upon divine power can damage the Prophet’s health or sanity, while both victory and defeat affect the cult’s position within the city.
Between expeditions, the underground Sanctum can be expanded with new rooms, training facilities, and relic storage. Players must balance that growth against secrecy while infiltrating Aranthor’s districts, from its criminal Old Town to the dungeons below and the politically protected High City.
Mercenary Brotherhood (Demo)
- Developer: SC Strategy Games
- Platform: PC
- Demo Release Date: July 3, 2026
- Planned Release: Q4 2026
- Steam Page
Mercenary Brotherhood is another attempt to build a fantasy campaign around ordinary sellswords.
Mercenaries emerge from combinations of race, background, traits, equipment, and experiences accumulated during the campaign. They remember important victories, close calls, and first kills, while fallen members receive obituaries summarizing their journey.
Towns and factions can also respond to the company’s reputation, helping each campaign produce stories that were not manually written in advance.
Its isometric turn-based battles account for terrain, morale, and individual abilities, with engagements ranging from small skirmishes to fights involving dozens of combatants. The planned progression system contains more than forty skills with their own development trees, over twenty playable races, veteran-specific awakening traits, and magical equipment that can carry serious drawbacks alongside its power.
The demo is an early opportunity to test those systems before the solo-developed project reaches its planned Q4 launch.
Twisted Fate
- Developer: Game Dynasty
- Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
- Release Dates: March 17, 2026
- Steam Page
Twisted Fate is a party-based roguelike centered on modifying a small set of abilities until they behave very differently from their starting versions.
Players control three heroes, each equipped with four core skills. Modifiers can change how those abilities function, strengthen interactions between party members, or push one character toward a specialized role.
Expeditions move through changing routes filled with different opponents, random events, regional bosses, and decisions about whether to pursue danger or take the safer path. Artifacts provide strong passive effects capable of reshaping an entire build, although some benefits arrive with meaningful costs.
The appeal lies in finding combinations that allow one modified ability to trigger or amplify another, then rebuilding the party when the next run refuses to provide the same pieces.
Aether & Iron
- Developers: Seismic Squirrel, Chaos Theory Games
- Platforms: PC, Mac
- Release Date: March 30, 2026
- Steam Page
Aether & Iron takes place in an alternate version of 1930s New York where anti-gravity technology has lifted roads, vehicles, and entire sections of the city into the sky.
Beneath that decopunk world lies a narrative RPG focused on corruption, authoritarian power, smuggling, and the social divide created by new technology. Exploration moves through the city’s backstreets and criminal underworld, with decisions influencing both individual relationships and New York’s wider political future.
Turn-based combat is fought between aether-powered vehicles where cars can be tuned for speed, reinforced with armor, or equipped with weapons such as grenade launchers, producing different tactical approaches to pursuits and firefights.
Recruitable companions contribute their own talents and personal stories, while the broader campaign includes hiding contraband, navigating secret routes, avoiding powerful enemies, and potentially becoming involved in the resistance forming beneath the floating city.
Echo Generation 2
- Developer: Cococucumber
- Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Cloud Gaming
- Release Date: May 27, 2026
- Availability: Steam and Xbox Game Pass
- Steam Page
Let’s close my weekly recap with Echo Generation 2, which moves backward in the family timeline, placing players in the role of Jack, the father from the original game.
A seemingly ordinary family vacation leads to hidden experiments, cosmic threats, and several impossible realities. Six characters are available across the adventure, with each hero bringing an individual deck and playstyle.
Its new stance system asks players to match symbols, break enemy defenses, and create openings for stronger combinations. Deck choices are supported by skill trees and badge upgrades, allowing the same hero to be adjusted for different lineups.
The story is also told from multiple perspectives, with individual chapters shifting between tones and settings that range from noir-influenced horror to neon cyberpunk. Cococucumber’s voxel presentation returns, but the expanded deckbuilding and party systems make this a substantial mechanical departure from the first Echo Generation.
