With Metro: Last Light due out shortly, I’ve been playing some Metro 2033 to refresh my memory when it comes both to Artyom’s story and the mechanics of the game. Before anyone chimes in to say that Metro isn’t an RPG — yes, thankyou. I already know that. I’m using the game as an illustration of something that I wished RPGs did, and that’s give currency some kind of real meaning within the game.

Following on from my last column, in which I looked at some of the most interesting looking RPGs on Kickstarter at the time, I thought I’d take a look at some of the most interesting Indie RPGs that are either in development or have been recently released. I’m a huge fan of the epic AAA-RPG and all the attendant production values and sense of scale that are usually attached to them, but there’s a special something that a small and dedicated team of true believers can bring to the table.

Indie RPGs might lack the polish of some of their higher budgeted brethren, but many of them are packed with some unique style, substance and character that would often be deemed too risky for a big budget title.

April is turning out to be quite the slow month for retail releases, RPG and otherwise. It’s not a total dead zone as it has often been in the past, with a few AAA titles being released during the month as well as a few smaller games. The lack of boxed copies isn’t really going to effect how much of an impact gaming has on my wallet, however, as once again a number of interesting projects have made their way to Kickstarter, all but demanding that I give them all of my available cash in anticipation of a finished product somewhere down the line when I will inevitably not have enough time to fully enjoy them.

Unlike the last number of projects I backed, such as Torment: Tides of Numenera or Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, the new batch of interesting games aren’t asking for huge amounts of money and aren’t set to break any records for the most funded game on Kickstarter. This doesn’t stop them from being every bit as interesting.

In real life, I’m a planner. I think through everything, weighing up the pros and cons of any given situation before committing myself. I’m not exactly spontaneous, if you get my drift — I’m more a “measure seventeen times, cut once” kind of person.

When it comes to games, however, I’m far more likely to adopt a “suck it and see” kind of mentality, jumping in with both feet, doing what seems fun and damning the consequences. Sometimes this works well — there is fun to be had with randomised characters that force you to play differently from how you normally would, and there are rarely any game breaking problems by casually misusing a couple of stat or skill points in most RPGs.

After spending a week or so with the beta of Grinding Gear Games action RPG Path of Exile however, my opinion of taking a haphazard approach to character design has changed rather drastically.

Something that has become readily apparent over the last six or so month is that crowdfunding has become both the salvation and the refuge of “risky” gaming ventures. I use the term risky advisedly, hence the inverted commas. I don’t mean risky in terms of hard to achieve or of dubious legality, but rather those projects that are deemed too risky for major publishers to want to touch.

Games that aren’t either the first part in a leveragable franchise, or belong to a long standing and popular series, games that can’t be advertised in the most basic, brotastic terms with wonderful hyperbole and flashy screenshots boasting all of the pixels. These “risky” projects are the ones that get a handful of fans frothing at the mouth and get some games journos waxing lyrical about how they are the future of gaming.

Whilst I’m not quite ready to go that far, the resurgence of smaller, more personal and for me at least, far more interesting RPG projects rarely fails to put a smile on my face.

In a discussion about game stories I was having a few weeks ago with some game-writer friends of mine, the subject turned, as it inevitably tends to do, to Planescape: Torment. We all agreed, as we inevitably do, that the game features one of the best, if not the best narratives in gaming — but an interesting comment was made that forced me to start replaying the game for the first time in a number of years, and re-examine my opinion.

As you could probably guess, I’m spectacularly excited by the prospect of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — despite its somewhat cumbersome title. I’m excited by the idea of it being an open world game with a landmass a little bigger than that featured in Skyrim, and I’m eagerly awaiting the conclusion to the ongoing story of Geralt’s death, rebirth and amnesia, and why the hell The Wild Hunt keep sticking their bony faces into the White Wolf’s life.

More than anything else in the announcement (and Game Informer’s first look that accompanied it) the thing that made me happiest about the announcement of The Witcher 3 was the fact that it is the final game in the series. The end of the line. The last.

January/February is usually a really slow time for releases, with few AAA titles hitting shelves before March and even fewer of them being RPGs. In recent years the number of early year releases has noticeably grown, with numerous publishers pushing pre-Christmas release dates a little so that there is some space between major releases. Unfortunately that hasn’t really lead to more RPGs being released in this slot. In the place of releases, however, seems to have come a heap of interesting news and controversy. Let’s take a look at some of that, shall we?

I loved Mass Effect 3. I thought it was a great way to end a wonderful story and I spent as much time as possible savouring the final journey of Shepard and the crew of the Normandy, completing every side quest, every conversational strand and following every interpersonal relationship to its ultimate limit.

Likewise I loved Skyrim, albeit for other reasons. The story wasn’t particularly great but the sense of place was superb, with the rewards for exploration being constantly surprising and tangible. Over 180 or so hours I explored every inch of the world, investigating every cave, climbing every mountain and opening every door, portcullis and chest I came across.

The thing is, however, that I have had absolutely no impetus to play any of the DLC for either title, though admittedly for quite different reasons.

The year (or world, perhaps) that is just about to end has been a fairly good one for the old RPG – there have been some stand-out AAA titles, some excellent indies and a few great sleeper hits as well. The following, in no particular order are my picks of the 2012 releases.

Indie RPG Legends of Eisenwald was successfully Kickstarted a few months ago, and our resident RPG guru Daniel Wilks has been eagerly eyeing it off ever since then. He’s finally got his hands on the game, and brings us back these thoughts.

If, by some outside chance, the world makes it through 21/12/2012 in the same manner we have made it through the untold number of other apocalypses that have been prophesied over the last two thousand years, 2013 is shaping up to be a great year for PC RPGs. We’ve got another Dragon Age on the horizon, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Neverwinter,  and successful Kickstarter backed games like Grim Dawn, Shadowrun Returns and Wasteland 2 – but there are a number of smaller, interesting games set to hit shelves and Steam throughout next year. I’ve picked a handful I’m especially interested in.