The Party-Based RPG Fest 2026 kicked off just a few hours ago, and, as the name suggests, it’s right up our alley, featuring plenty of CRPGs, Tactical RPGs, and dungeon crawlers.
The festival runs through September 21, with tons of playable demos and discounts available throughout the event. I’ve taken a quick look at some of the new games worth trying and put together a list of 10 titles, which I’m planning to follow up with another list later this week.
One practical distinction before we start: some entries use Steam Playtest rather than a standalone demo, so check the access information under each game. Release dates below refer to the upcoming game or its Early Access launch, not the playable build.
Against All Skies
Developer: Magonia Entertainment
Release date: 2027
Access: Steam Playtest through the game’s store page
Against All Skies centers on getting everyone to act at the right moment. This party-based roguelite deckbuilder gives each character their own cards and mechanics, then connects them through Resonance. By moving characters forward or backward along the combat timeline, you can bring their turns together and trigger stronger abilities. Party composition therefore affects both the cards available and how those cards fit into a shared plan.
The journey takes place aboard the royal airship Helmholtz, traveling between floating islands toward a mysterious storm. Different routes, island conditions, and party leaders change each run, while the story explores revolution and the responsibilities that come with power.
The festival playtest includes the first act and three characters, with the option to switch leaders between attempts. Magonia is clear that this is an early build: much of the presentation still uses placeholder artwork. Go in to examine the combat ideas, not to judge how the finished game will look.
Blood Sword
Developer: Prime Games
Release date: To be announced
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson’s Blood Sword gamebooks form the foundation for this adaptation, which blends branching storytelling with tactical battles.
You control up to four adventurers drawn from the Warrior, Sage, Trickster, and Enchanter classes, making decisions that shape the journey through a grim fantasy world. The appeal is in that relationship between the written adventure and the party you bring into it: character abilities matter during encounters, while choices can send the story down different paths.
Prime Games has been refining the combat around compact hex-based maps and cooperation between classes. A Warrior can knock enemies away from vulnerable allies, while a Trickster can use smoke to interfere with ranged attacks. Spellcasting has its own complication: a failed cast still produces an effect, but with reduced effectiveness and damaging backlash. That gives the Sage’s healing a specific role in supporting an aggressive Enchanter.
Those are useful details to watch for in the demo. The familiar class names are only the starting point; what matters is how their abilities help the group recover from mistakes or create an opening.
Starfinder: Afterlight
Developer: Epictellers Entertainment
Release date: Early Access in 2026; full release currently targeted for Q4 2027
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Starships and spellcasting share the same setting in Starfinder: Afterlight, a science-fantasy CRPG based on Paizo’s tabletop RPG. The story involves a missing captain and a crew traveling through the Pact Worlds, with companion relationships, faction decisions, and personal conflicts forming a substantial part of the adventure.
Its turn-based battles use a three-action system, making the distribution of actions an important part of each turn. Movement, attacks, and abilities compete for that budget, so reaching a better position has to be weighed against what a character could accomplish by staying put. The planned class selection spans martial, technological, and magical roles.
The full game is being developed around six companions with individual stories and decisions that affect their relationships with you. Those are plans for the larger campaign, however, and should not be confused with the demo’s contents.
The currently available demo provides an early opportunity to try the adaptation before its Early Access launch.
Tattered Banners
Developer: CookieByte Entertainment
Release date: Q4 2026 in Early Access
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Burning a farm can cause more than damage to one property in Tattered Banners. In the developer’s simulated medieval world, disrupted food production can contribute to famine, send refugees onto the roads, and strengthen local bandits. Protecting trade can produce the opposite effect, helping a city develop and support a stronger militia.
You lead a mercenary company within that world, while noble houses and settlements pursue their own interests. Contracts and opportunities include caravan raids, sabotage, smuggling, and sieges. The intention is for your work to influence the conditions that generate later opportunities and problems.
The company itself is built through recruitment, equipment, training, and combinations of character backgrounds and specializations. Tactical encounters use support abilities and reactions, while mission objectives reflect what is happening outside the battlefield.
That is the part I would pay particular attention to in the demo: whether the company’s decisions feel connected to the surrounding world. A mercenary campaign becomes more interesting when yesterday’s profitable contract helps explain why today’s road is full of trouble.
8 More Lives
Developer: Luden.io
Release date: 2026 in Early Access
Access: Steam Playtest through the store page’s Request Access option
The cats in 8 More Lives have wages to collect, wounds to recover from, and contracts to survive. Luden.io’s mercenary RPG takes explicit inspiration from Battle Brothers, placing a company of feline adventurers in a procedurally generated, low-magic medieval world.
Keeping the company solvent is part of the job. Contracts bring in money, but expenses and recovery still influence which fights are worth taking. Recruits develop through backgrounds, perks, and masteries, giving you room to shape their roles beyond a fixed class selection.
Battles take place on hex maps that correspond to the terrain on the campaign map. Elevation and obstacles affect positioning, while stamina, initiative, morale, and injuries influence how long a fighter can remain useful. Different defensive systems, including shields, parrying, and layered armor, also make weapon selection relevant to the opponent.
The feline cast gives it an immediately recognizable identity, but the systems underneath are aimed at people who enjoy managing an entire company, including the difficult stretch between one victory and the next.
Seen NOT Heard
Developer: Odd Indeed
Release date: To be announced
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Melia wakes from a nightmare with her mouth sewn shut and no clear memory of what happened. That is the unsettling beginning of Seen NOT Heard, a story-driven RPG whose sketch-and-watercolor presentation sits alongside themes of family trauma and its lasting effects.
Her journey involves recovering fragments of lost memories and meeting companions with their own personalities and combat roles. Party development includes upgrading characters and crafting equipment, with turn-based encounters built around their abilities working together. Among the characters introduced is Anselin, an herbalist who accompanies Melia during the opening section.
The demo released on September 14 contains the complete prologue, two zones, and two bosses, making its scope unusually clear. It introduces Melia and Anselin through illustrated dialogue and gives you a defined opening chapter to work through. Odd Indeed also confirms that demo progress carries over to the full game.
This is the entry I would approach primarily for its story and atmosphere, then use the prologue to see how comfortably the party combat fits alongside that more personal narrative.
Thornetica
Developer: Forbidden Candy
Release date: To be announced.
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Casting a university play becomes a party-building exercise in Thornetica. Members of Kent University’s theater club prepare a production based on the conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster, with its battles taking the form of turn-based tactical encounters. You choose which students take each role, assembling your group through casting decisions instead of recruiting soldiers.
Those roles have different combat strengths and weaknesses, drawing from familiar strategy RPG classes alongside some less conventional options. Your casting choices can also change dialogue and parts of the story, giving you another reason to experiment beyond finding an effective team. That connection between the actors and their onstage roles is what catches the attention in Thornetica.
Between rehearsals, the focus returns to the students themselves. You divide your time between activities that strengthen relationships or develop social attributes such as Maturity, Honesty, and Comradery.
Minigames, dates, and conversations provide opportunities to learn about the club members and their personal difficulties, with some friendships potentially developing into romance. The demo has been available since March 26, 2026, so this is an existing playable build to catch up with during the festival.
Dungeon Overdose
Developer: SHIGEFUSA.WORKS
Release date: Q4 2026
Access: Downloadable Steam demo
Power comes with a meter to watch in Dungeon Overdose. Powerful abilities raise the OD%, or Overdose Rate, creating a relationship between greater strength and greater danger. Its side-scrolling dungeon exploration leads into command-based battles, with dark pixel art giving the expedition a distinctly uneasy appearance.
Progression avoids conventional experience-based leveling. Characters instead grow through awakening mechanics during combat, while a rebirth system allows continued development across repeated attempts. You begin an expedition with a selected partner and can encounter additional companions along the way. The full game’s companion jobs include familiar options such as knights and mages alongside nurses, jesters, and dancers.
There is an important accessibility caveat for this list: Steam currently lists the demo as supporting Japanese only, even though the full game lists English support. The playable build covers the first dungeon layer and its boss, and its save data does not transfer to the finished game. For English-speaking readers, this may be one to investigate cautiously now and revisit when a localized build becomes available.
Zodiac Legion
Developer: Studio Draconis
Release date: Q4 2026 in Early Access
Access: Downloadable Steam demo, with an updated experimental build announced for the festival
Rebuilding a magical order means taking responsibility for more than the knights currently standing on the battlefield. Zodiac Legion puts you in charge of a stronghold, research, recruitment, and expeditions, connecting individual tactical encounters to the longer process of restoring the order’s strength.
Inside its dungeons, destructible terrain and powerful magic give the squad ways to alter the battlefield. Positioning still matters, but the layout does not have to remain fixed throughout an encounter. The larger campaign adds the consequences of injuries and losses, with necromancy introducing another possibility for retaining fallen veterans.
The festival update is particularly relevant for anyone who has tried an earlier version. Its experimental demo expands the campaign side, including research, recovery between missions, and the promotion of soldiers into champions. It also introduces additional powers associated with the zodiac signs and options to accelerate combat animations.
Studio Draconis warns that this build still has rough edges, including possible crashes and malfunctioning abilities. Treat it as a look at systems being assembled and refined, not a finished slice of the campaign.
Critical Shift
Developer: Rhinotales
Release date: To be announced
Access: Open Steam Playtest
Attacking an enemy in Critical Shift can trigger an immediate counterattack, making target selection a decision about what you are prepared to take in return. Weapon range, cover, initiative, and limited supplies all feed into those exchanges. Noise and environmental hazards provide other ways to influence encounters, including drawing threats into unfavorable positions.
The setting is ICE-1, a classified Antarctic facility where paranormal dangers have turned an investigation into a survival problem. Exploration happens in real time, while battles switch to turns. That structure leaves space for searching the complex and managing scarce ammunition and medical supplies between confrontations.
The current open playtest contains the first three missions, covering combat, exploration, and the beginning of the story. Rhinotales says access is granted automatically through the Steam page, without keys or a separate application process. As with several entries here, it remains a pre-release build, with bugs and balance changes still expected.
