If you're growing impatient for The Witcher 4, here's a new, $6 adventure where you decide the fate of hundreds of Geralts

All of the best RPGs give you plenty of freedom of choice: your stats, your gear, the order you take on questlines, decisions that create branching narratives… your hair color in the character creator. But in most cases, there is still a main, hand-crafted storyline that guides you through. Well, here’s a surprising spin on The Witcher that gives you choose-your-own-adventure levels of narrative flexibility. It’s called Reigns: The Witcher, and it’s out now.

This isn’t a mod or a fan project – this is an officially licensed title in the Reigns series, following in the footsteps of its Game of Thrones-themed entry. In Reigns: The Witcher, you take the role of Dandelion the bard in order to tell your own gripping, inspiring, or embarrassing tales of Geralt of Rivia. Stories in Reigns games are decided by way of some Tinder-style swiping – you’re presented a card of dialog, and two actions or responses that you can pick from by flicking either left or right.

Each choice has an effect on one of four reputation meters. One represents how humans view Geralt, one is for non-humans’ perception of him, one is for his reputation with sorcerers, and one is based on how focused he is on hunting monsters. If one meter gets too high or two low, that could result in a scenario that sees your current story come to an end – often, a grizzly one for your poor Geralt. Sure, if you want to go for a ‘man of the people’ build, keep maxing out the human reputation to see what the outcome is. However, the primary goal is to keep Geralt alive and your story running as long as possible, so Dandelion can tell the ultimate Witcher tale.

After each unsuccessful run, you’ll earn additional cards that increase Dandelion’s narrative possibilities, so there’s definitely a roguelite element here that’ll keep you playing.

As well as simply swiping left and right, battles with monsters can be played out in puzzle-like minigames that require moving a Geralt tile around a grid to dodge and deal attacks.

Not only is Reigns: The Witcher a great way to satiate your hunger for the series (I know how impatient you’re getting about The Witcher 4 release date…) but it’s a pleasantly affordable one too. Sure, it’s mechanically quite basic, but with thousands of narrative cards and some gorgeous artwork, I’m surprised to see it being sold for just $5.99 / £4.99.

Reigns: The Witcher is out right now for PC players through both Steam and GOG, and is also on mobile.

Now that Reigns has tackled the worlds of The Witcher and Game of Thrones, my thoughts are turning to which universe it could tackle next. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d definitely be down for Fallout.