Having been around roughly since the time video games began, and being lucky enough to have the means to play even earlier games one way or another, I’ve seen a lot of variety over the years. While people today are pretty spoiled with fully-realized worlds, full text voiceovers, and crazy production values, I remember the days of pretty much purely text-based gaming. Whether in the form of the well-regarded Zork, or later in my college years playing (and coding) Multi-User Dungeons online, I have a deep respect for well-composed and meticulously planned adventures I mostly need to see in my mind.

That’s pretty much the best way to describe Roadwarden, a truly distinctive RPG adventure that is full of mystery, danger, and a ticking clock where you’ll need to decide what sort of character you’re looking to be and go all-in on that direction. Your role as a Roadwarden sounds well-defined on paper, charged with securing safe routes through areas others could fear to tread, but you’ll quickly discover how you go about that task is nothing but challenging choices. Will you look into the fate of your predecessor, not only potentially identifying a major threat but also likely securing some choice gear in the process? Will you try to help out the many people you’ll encounter along the way, either in the interest of information, reward, or simply trying to be righteous? The problem is that you’ll only have 40 days to do whatever it is, so there’s no time to dillydally.

As much as all of this truly shines, and allows you to dig deep and explore a rich world full of some very interesting characters, there is one persistent aggravation I ran into on the Switch that was more fearsome than any dark creature… and that’s the user interface. Oddly enough, being text based, this would seem to be an easy assignment. You can choose one of the options for how to proceed in the central pane, and you can move over to go through more high-level options in the menus on the upper right. Ranging from working perfectly fine, to slow to respond, to at times unresponsive for more than a few moments, this really feels like something a patch should be able to resolve, but until then it really does the experience no favors. Worse, when it begins to delay you can sometimes end up wondering, or outright suspecting, that you’ve accidentally chosen the wrong option. You can get through it, and the experience is generally worth it, but I’ll admit that the problem was confounding given what would seem to be the simpler overall nature of the game.

If you’re able to get past those frustrations, or when the game will hopefully get fixed to perform better, there’s a truly remarkable world here to be explored. Better yet, there are very few games in the Switch library with this general approach to gameplay, and even fewer that do it this well. If you’re a fan of fine prose that makes you imagine characters and situations far outside of your everyday experience, this is a great title for enjoying that feeling.