A New Ballad Of Geralt In Reigns: The Witcher

Reigns: The Witcher is a new swipe-based adventure game launching on February 25 for PC and mobile, created by Nerial and CD Projekt. You play as Geralt, making choices that affect your standing with various factions, with each playthrough framed as one of the bard Dandelion's ballads that always concludes with Geralt's death.

I had upset the peasantry by murdering quite a lot of them. They were about to hang a deserter, and my intervention went poorly. To make things right, I agreed to help with their protest against taxation, which led to an unusual request to kill a barghest for its blood.

“The green really pops on our protest signs,” they told me.

I had not yet mastered the combat system, and the barghest collected my blood instead. This is how Dandelion, the bard, got another story of Geralt’s death to turn into a ballad. Next month, Nerial, in collaboration with CD Projekt, will release Reigns: The Witcher. Each run through the game represents one of Dandelion's ballads about Geralt's adventures, and they all appear to end with Geralt’s death. After the barghest, a gnomish prank was the end of me. The game revives the swipe-based decision-making mechanic from the original 2016 game and its sequels. Instead of managing a kingdom, each choice guides Geralt through a new narrative.

Every decision alters four values that must be kept in balance to avoid disaster. Three of these represent your standing with humans, non-humans, and sorcerers. The fourth measures your dedication to the witcher's path. This demand for balance reflects Geralt's characteristic neutrality; you can only get so involved before you must pull back and resume the role of a reluctant antihero. When things go wrong, battle begins. The combat is more complex than the duels in the original games. It is a real-time system where Geralt moves left and right at the bottom of a grid as icons fall toward him.

Some icons are witcher's swords, which you must move to intercept, while others are enemy attacks that must be dodged. Witcher signs also appear, allowing you to use your abilities. Monsters have special attacks, like the bruxae, which lets out a paralyzing scream that freezes you in place. Each run feels like a series of sidequests. I caught a serial killer, protected a merchant, arm-wrestled a guard, and was turned into a jade pendant so Yennefer could wear me to a banquet.

Completing objectives unlocks more cards for the next run and levels up Dandelion's bardic abilities. One of my next objectives is to find love, a skill called Geralt the Bathed, which makes it easier to please people. The game includes small details that show an understanding of the source material, like the quest complete sound from The Witcher 3 playing at the end of a run. While each run takes only a few minutes, the game is designed for longer play sessions. Reigns: The Witcher is out February 25 on PC and mobile.

Read also, CD Projekt RED is looking for new employees to work on Cyberpunk 2, and the upcoming Project Sirius and Project Hadar. Associate Game Director of Cyberpunk 2, Pawel Sasko, announced on X that the studio is hiring for roles in engineering, animation, art, production, audio, and localization, as detailed on the company's career site.