Rob Koska over at Sawtooth Games has been quietly building a massive love letter to the era of crunchy CRPGs, and it’s called Revenge of the Firstborn. While many modern titles are busy streamlining rules to make them more “accessible,” this game leans hard in the opposite direction. It’s an isometric RPG built entirely around the 3.5 SRD, meaning it embraces the glorious complexity of feat trees, spell resistance, and the kind of deep character customization that lets you spend hours just perfecting your party’s stats.
The sheer scale of what this solo developer has achieved is honestly a bit wild. You get to manage a full party of six adventurers, pulling from 10 classes and 7 races to tackle a world filled with over 120 classic monsters. The combat isn’t just a click-and-watch affair; it’s a high-stakes tactical turn-based experience where positioning and verticality actually matter. In a move that puts some AAA studios to shame, the game even features mounted combat and 3D movement like flying and swimming, allowing you to navigate the environment in ways that most grid-based games never even attempt.
Beyond the narrative-driven main campaign, which drops you into a fractured land full of difficult choices, there is a dedicated endless roguelike mode. This is perfect for those days when you don’t want to worry about dialogue and just want to see how long your optimized builds can survive in procedural dungeons against increasingly deadly foes. Whether you are scaling a cliff with a climb check or unleashing one of the 300 spells available in your grimoire, the game feels like a tabletop session brought to life. A Steam demo is currently out in the wild, so you can test your mettle right now while we wait for the full 2026 release.
