Welcome to the RPG Release Roundup, a weekly look back at some of the RPGs released in the past 7 days. Each week, we’ll select at least 4-5 RPGs of all shapes and sizes released on Steam, Itch.io, PS Store, Xbox, and Nintendo eShop.
You don’t need me to tell you there’s a ridiculous number of games released each week, and even in the RPG genre, rarely is there a barren week unless you’re looking for a very particular kind of RPG experience. These picks are not the best of the week by any means, just the ones that looked most interesting.
Read on to find out what fresh RPG delights we’ve got this week.
RPG Release Roundup for July 21, 2025
Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson
Developer: Ritual Studios
Publisher: Playdigious Originals
Released: July 17, 2025
Give me a musically themed anything, and it’ll grab my attention. Fretless is no exception.
In this turn-based RPG, you play a musician who is trying to restore harmony in an ”off-tuned” world where the bad guys have been corrupting music and looking to capture every note, chord, and song by using soul-binding contracts to take the power of musicians (just doesn’t sound realistic, does it?).
Expect lots of musically-themed abilities, action, and foes in this humorous pixel-art RPG.
Star Rift Saga
Studio Vela LLC
Studio Vela LLC
July 15, 2025
Studio Vela’s sci-fi Metroidvania RPG sees players exploring an alien world and looking for ways to close rifts in space that threaten to release disastrous planet-devouring monsters.
Along the way, you’re able to build up an outpost that brings newcomers with extra goodies and upgradables to help tip the balance of the fight in your favor.
Astral Wield
Dream Stories
Dream Nexus Studios
July 18, 2025
Astral Wield takes a leaf or two out of the classic JRPGs’ book to give us a top-down throwback with colorful pixel art and a relatively free choice of progressing the story or exploring for the discovery of secret areas, optional boss fights, and loot.
Return from Core
2P Games, Shochiku
Tanxun Studio
July 18, 2025
A Monster Girl Hangout game meets mining RPG? Someone knows the demographics they’re after.
This top-down RPG is an underground sandbox that gives players the freedom to build a home for their entourage, and live a fruitful life beneath the world. What’s more, there’s plenty of production to help build up your base and reap the rewards of a mining life.
Oh, and there’s fighting to do as well.
Return from Core has just come out of Early Access, where it’s garnered a fairly positive reaction from its player base.
The Necromancer’s Tale
Psychic Software
July 17, 2025
We’ll have a review of this one soon, but in the meantime, The Necromancer’s Tale is very much worth highlighting now.
A Gothic RPG set in an alt-history 16th-century realm near Venice, The Necromancer’s Tale is a proper throwback to early 2000s PC RPGs. While it may show some technical limitations on the visual side, there’s a lot of depth to this that threatens to suck up a few weeks of your life if you let it.
Back to the Dawn
Metal Head Games
Spiral Up Games
July 18, 2025
Back to the Dawn offers a unique blend of elements. It is a prison life simulator where the population consists of anthropomorphized animals. It’s not cutesy in the slightest, though.
As you plot your escape from prison, you’ll get to live out your daily life, interacting with other inmates, trying (or not) to stay out of trouble. But beneath that is a world simmering with faction squabbles, deeply-ensconced conspiracies, and corruption.
Find every previous RPG Release Roundup, here.
