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"You can sequence break the game," the developers of Space Wreck suggest on its Steam page. The game is "Inch wide, miles deep," with "Combat 100% optional." There is so little artifice to Space Wreck 's presentation as a "Hardcore role-playing game," no real sense of wider-audience marketing. Perhaps that's because, after playing it, you get the sense the developers saved all their creativity for the possibilities inside.

The easiest point of comparison for the just-released Space Wreck are the first two Fallout games, the isometric, click-to-move kind, from the late 1990s. That's because Space Wreck's developers, two folks from Latvia, directly point to those games wherever they can. Having sunk hundreds of hours into those games, I see the homage. It's a game with a post-apocalyptic, used-future aesthetic, intentionally clunky graphics, a wicked sense of humor, turn-based combat, and room for lots of builds and strategies.

But Space Wreck offers a whole lot more role-playing than gaming, and that's a good, refreshing thing. There's no deep mythology here, very little voice acting, and combat is not all that complicated. Instead, you get, according to the developer, three to eight ways to complete every quest. To get into a room guarded by a gun-toting security guard, you could, of course, win a shootout with the guard. You could persuade him to step aside. You could disguise yourself. You could, if small enough, climb into a nearby vent and sneak into the room. You could reprogram some nearby security bots to take out the guard for you. Nearly every situation in Space Wreck has this kind of flexibility, and some of them far more.

Enlarge / The disks and diagrams Mike Brixius has to work with in finishing his 1984 CRPG project. (credit: YouTube/RavenWolf Retro Tech)

There are stories that some of us, at a certain stage of adulthood, should never hear. Not if we value our time or our storage space. I regret to inform you that Mike Brixius, on his RavenWolf Retro Tech channel, offers just such a story about his quest to finish his own Commodore 64 CRPG from 1984 . He's going to be able to do it, too, because he kept all the disks, tapes, notes, and hand-documented assembly code print-outs ever since his teenage project.

"It's one of those loose threads in my life that I deeply regret," Brixius says in his video. He hopes his Patreon supporters and YouTube community can give him the "moral support and accountability" he needs to complete his game after all these years.

Digital Dungeon Master ( DDM ) was based in part on the Avalon Hill tabletop games Brixius loved at the time, but more so on Avalon Hill's foray into dungeon-crawling RPGs, Telengard . Brixius wanted to recreate Telengard 's limited line of sight but add in a surface world, akin to that of another favorite of his, Ultima IV .

Enlarge / Artist's conception of D&D fans holding back WotC's attempts to change the game's license. (credit: WotC )

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) owner Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has halted its attempts to update the longstanding Open Gaming License (OGL) that has dictated the legal use of the game's rules for decades. The move comes after weeks of controversy and belated attempts to partially scale back leaked plans for an OGL update.

The original OGL 1.0a , first released in the early '00s, will now "remain untouched" WotC announced in a tweet Friday . What's more, the entire D&D Systems Reference Document (SRD)—which also includes creative content like classes, spells, and monsters trademarked and copyrighted by WotC—is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , meaning it's free to use as long as proper credit is given.

WotC's full retreat in this licensing battle comes as WotC says survey feedback on the latest draft update to the license was "in such high volume and its direction is so plain," that the company felt it had to act immediately, as Executive Producer Kyle Brink wrote on the D&D Beyond blog .

Enlarge / Artist's conception of the community reaction to WotC's proposed license changes. (credit: WotC )

Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has backed away from some of the most controversial portions contained in leaked drafts of an update to its decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL) following widespread fan outrage over the proposed changes .

For instance, WotC now says directly that any content already released under the previous version of the OGL will "remain unaffected" by the update. That contradicts language in a leaked draft of the license update suggesting that the earlier version of the OGL "is no longer an authorized license agreement."

The updated version of the OGL also will "not contain... any royalty structure," WotC writes, despite draft language calling for a 25 percent royalty on annual revenues above $750,000. The now-removed royalty language was "designed to apply to large corporations attempting to use OGL content" and wasn't intended "to impact the vast majority of the community," the company writes. "However, it’s clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1."

Interested in checking out a fresh upcoming pixel-art turn-based RPG? Of Blades & Tails looks pretty great and there's now a demo available to try.

The developer explains that it's inspired by Diablo, Tales of Maj'Eyal and Stoneshard but there's no permadeath so you don't need to worry about any brutal difficulty here. That's not to say it will be easy but it will regularly give you a save so that's nice. On top of that the lore is inspired by the classic point & click adventure Inherit the Earth. Made with Godot Engine , you can see a trailer below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Game Features:

• Turn-based Combat that allows for quick action or strategic planning
• An Open World with lots of places to discover
• A fresh, animalistic setting in a vibrant pixel art look
• Procedural generated dungeons and caves
• A Main Storyline and various side quests
• Classless Character Development with many abilities to unlock
• Equipment of different qualities and Unique Items with special powers
• Hunt giant bugs or gather herbs and other useful resources
• Many Enemy Types with different skills that may require tactical decisions
• Trade with rats and other profit-seeking animals
• ... and more to come!

Try out the demo on itch.io and Steam .