There are a lot of RPGs on Steam at this point – I can name at least three right now – but for too damn long, Valve's Half-Life patch tool turned PC gaming emporium has lacked The RPG, the role-playing game of all time. On August 7, 2025, Developer Dionysus Acroreites finally resolved this problem. The RPG is now available, and it actually looks like more than just a cheap meme game.
That said, The RPG – somehow that title wasn't taken until now – definitely strikes me as a meme game. It's billed as "Minimalistic Skyrim + West of Loathing + Supraland." If you're not familiar, those games are, respectively, Todd Howard's retirement plan, a comedy stick figure Western RPG, and a shockingly good 3D Metroidvania with Zelda vibes.
What we have here is a first-person 3D RPG where you explore dungeons, fight (or liberate) monsters, and explore a genuinely cute low-poly fantasy world. It's a mishmash of themes and tones, a smoothie of subgenres and slapstick. Skyrim feels like the dominant inspiration, with plenty of references to Bethesda's snowy sandbox, but The RPG is likened to "any fantasy RPG, but with traditional aspects simplified and turned inside out."
The simplification manifests in obvious ways. "There is an inventory and leveling up, but no complex skill-trees and inventory management," for example. The HUD is lightweight, and the system requirements suggest this game would run on a roasted sweet potato.
It's the distorted genre norms that are harder to quickly explain. Like Skyrim, The RPG comes down to a big dragon wrecking the place, but in this case, in what seems like a loving nod to Bethesda jank, the dragon "constantly glitches and breaks the game's rules."
"Find out why!" Dionysus Acroreites says. "Well... or don't. It's your choice, and it matters, like choices in RPGs should."
I'll tell you one of my favorite back-of-the-box features: "You don't need to eat food to heal - just pluck a piece of bread into a wound." This feels like a hybrid of Skyrim's patented cheese wheel healthcare system and the way you'd heal in Far Cry 3 by graphically straightening your broken bones, and it's the kind of winking, video game caricature I find charmingly stupid.
The RPG has reviewed pretty well so far at 83% positive, it seems to be a brisk 10 or so hours long based on those reviews, and it's got a free demo which should tell you if this particular flavor of meme game will actually hold your attention. These are all positives in my book. Until August 14, it will be 10% off, down to $13.49 from its usual $14.99 price.
