Capturing the unique experience of playing a tabletop roleplaying game with friends at the table can be difficult, but Worlds of Aria strives to offer a streamlined rules-light video game experience to capture it. The game, developed by Ludogram Games, is a fantasy-themed RPG experience that emulates a TTRPG experience in video game form. (Disclosure: a review copy of the game was provided for this article.) But how does it hold up?
How to Play
Up to four players can gather together to run through a fantasy campaign. The characters vary in styling, from master assassins to cursed archaeologists to master bards. The players form a group of adventurers who must journey together to defeat various threats, whether corrupt nobles, demonic incursions or monstrous forces seeking to destroy Aria, your home kingdom.
Every scene plays out as a TTRPG might, where our 3D character tokens interact with 2D characters made of cardboard on a table whose stage is swapped out depending on what is going on in the story. It reminded me of Gloomhaven and Kinfire Chronicles, which try to play out a prewritten campaign using board game tools.
The character designs are fun and reflect the silliness of the game. The gameplay was easy to use and relied on mostly clicking around the environment and using a variety of items to benefit yourself. Laura Bailey’s narration is an especially delightful touch for Critical Role fans.
The game’s core draws on TTRPG mechanics, where players will be asked to roll d100 skill checks to see if they can successfully perform a particular task. If they can roll a check successfully under the number set within their character sheet, then they succeed! There are also a mixture of critical successes and critical failures which can provide outstanding results or dire consequences to a scene. For example, a critical success might allow a single player to defeat every villain in a room with a single attack. In contrast, a critical failure might lead to them getting hit by every villain there.
Each character comes with a unique ability that modifies their rolls. For example, one character can automatically get a critical success three times during a campaign. Another character uses their “fans” to bring a dice result down by a certain number. The abilities are limited but allow players a chance to modify or gamble for big results. It took some time to change them, but these don’t affect anyone but a player’s own rolls.
Where the game focuses is on these skill checks and on story decisions. Whenever a scene occurs, players will be asked to take on a variety of tasks. For example, there is a scene early on where players have to evade the guards. They can choose to either go to the garden zoo or to the royal beehive. Each character in the game must decide to go one way or the other, depending on how many ‘slots’ there are for that action. Some of these slots might require skill rolls, while others may combine for positive results (such as one character distracting a character and the other sneaking up behind them.) While every character will have different ranking skills, every character can perform every type of check.
The game incentivizes collaborative storytelling alongside a division of duties. Not every character can choose to do every task, thus offering incentives for players to discuss, plan and act appropriately based on their skills and priorities.
The gameplay was straightforward to learn, and the story brings this lighthearted yet high-spirited storytelling along with it, where black chickens lay golden square eggs and seagulls present a legitimate challenge to your character’s health and safety. You can tell the writers had a lot of fun with the gameplay. But I will admit that I was underwhelmed with the characterization. For example, there is a baker, a “queen of the bards,” and a cursed archaeologist. All of these are fantastic character concepts for a fantasy RPG campaign, but none of the writing shows that your character choice impacts the dialogue, the story, or where the adventure goes. Instead, they are simplistic caricatures that attach special flavored abilities that can affect a player’s rolls in many ways. Perhaps I am spoiled by the inspired character-driven decision-making of games like Baldur’s Gate 3, but I expected at least a little around what NPCs I choose to play.
I also found the gameplay particularly repetitive over time. While each stage offered stars for upgrading characters, the gameplay remained rather similar throughout the various acts: roll a skill check, make character choices, hope for the best, and then do it all over again. It made it hard for me to remain invested in the story.
Having other players join you makes the game much more fun. It presents an easy-to-play RPG experience online that might scratch the itch for individuals who lack the time to commit to a full-time campaign or don’t want the complexities of a Gloomhaven cooperative board game. I tested the game out as a single-player game and could see how the push and pull of other players at the ‘table’ could help make this experience far more delightful. But I don’t know if adding other players is enough to justify whether or not a game is fun since most games are made more fun when my friends join me to do it.
Conclusion:
Worlds of Aria is a colorful rendition of a TTRPG experience in visual form, with a lot of love and unique art. The game captures what it’s like to sit at a table and roleplay with ease. However, the game lacks interesting gameplay or storytelling. The player characters are one-note, the mechanics grow repetitive fast, and the story offers little in the way of variation. Players may find themselves yawning as the chapters go on. But if you want a simple experience for your fellow TTRPG fans to enjoy on a PC, it’s a cute choice to consider creating an alternative to your everyday table.
Worlds of Aria is currently available on the PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.