A new single-player RPG called Wheel of Fate has been announced by developers UDX Interactive and Game Pill, and it has quite the pedigree behind it - ex-Mass Effect 2 designer Miles Holmes is behind the new launch, and will be bringing the experience he garnered while working at BioWare during that studio's best years to the new title. Single-player gaming has experienced something of a resurgence over the last few years after fans began growingly increasingly concerned about the genre's future thanks to microtransaction-based business models and the dominance of multiplayer franchises in sales.
Luckily, 2018 and 2019 saw many of modern gaming's best titles launch to critical acclaim as single-player campaigns. Spider-Man on PS4, God of War, and Red Dead Redemption 2 were all solo campaigns at heart, and all of them performed well commercially and critically. Many games have also been leaning heavier into RPG mechanics, like the Assassin's Creed series, and finding success with players who appear to respond positively when given more options in the form of branching paths and skill trees. For a genre in RPGs that appeared to be on life support at times over the last few console generations, its relevance and popularity now makes it well worth exploring for studios once more.
That's what UDX Interactive and Game Pill will hope to capitalize on with the announcement of Wheel of Fate, a single-player RPG for PC via Steam where players determine there destiny by their own choices and spinning the titular Wheel of Fate. Using a butterfly effect method, the world around the players will constantly change with the spin of the wheel and actions taken during the spin will then affect outcomes of the next spin - reportedly, this results in thousands of different story possibilities within Wheel of Fate. With talent like Holmes, most famous for his turn as a key designer in Mass Effect 2, that kind of ambitious narrative structure will at least have a lot of experience poured into it.
As far as structure is concerned, Wheel of Fate will have what's called an Active Response Battle system that will be turn-based. Wheel of Fate will also have gear combinations, craftable items, fort-building elements, and more, as well as an A.I.-leaning that will inform the way the game responds with story and environment elements. Wheel of Fate will begin a Kickstarter campaign on September 9.
With RPGs becoming so popular once more, Wheel of Fate feels like it has a chance to make a big impact with its impressive story pitch. There's no doubt that Mass Effect itself is a huge selling point even if a title is only loosely related to it in some way. Whether or not the game can execute on its promise remains to be seen, but fans will hope it's more Mass Effect 2 than Mass Effect: Andromeda when all is said and done.