Baldur's Gate 3 Meets Mass Effect In New RPG You Can Try Free

Fantasy RPGs are all the rage these days, but the sci-fi genre hasn't gotten quite the same amount of love. While Baldur's Gate 3 fans have no shortage of alternatives on the market, Mass Effect diehards may be pinning all of their hopes on the upcoming game Exodus. If you like both, though, one RPG slated to arrive in 2026 could be the perfect combination.

Starfinder: Afterlight is an upcoming "party-based RPG" in a "science-fantasy universe," and a Steam public playtest is running from March 19 to April 5. This beta is open to 1,000 selected users from the pool of everyone who signed up, so it might be too late to get your name in the hat if you haven't already. Late pledges for the game's Kickstarter campaign are also available until the end of the month.

Starfinder: Afterlight Is A Promising New RPG

All The Right Ingredients

The Starfinder universe is a spin-off of the tabletop RPG Pathfinder, which was already adapted to the video game format by acclaimed titles like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. While Pathfinder sticks to a D&D-like fantasy flavor, Starfinder embraces sci-fi elements as it voyages into the further reaches of the galaxy. If you're familiar with D&D's Spelljammer, it's in a similar vein, but Starfinder is a bit more high-tech and hard sci-fi.

Like Baldur's Gate 3 and Mass Effect, Starfinder: Afterlight promises an emphasis on the party. Six companions will each provide "personal stories and moral dilemmas," with player choices and party relationships influencing both their fates and that of the galaxy. The combat is a lot closer to Baldur's Gate 3 than Mass Effect, though, with a turn-based system built on the mechanics of its tabletop inspiration.

A Free Playtest Has Landed On Steam

More Are Likely To Come

It might be too late to get on board for the current playtest, but it should still be a good source for new opinions and perspectives on the game. Starfinder has been no stranger to beta tests so far, so there might also be more opportunities to come in the future. There's still an option to request playtest access on Steam, which promises to notify players "when the developer is ready for more participants."

This is the first game from Epictellers Entertainment, a studio with some former developers from Crysis studio Crytek. Hopefully, the team will be able to translate that expertise to a totally different sci-fi setting. Based on what's been shown so far, Starfinder: Afterlight looks like a promising option for fans of Baldur's Gate 3 and Mass Effect, but we'll find out for sure sometime this year.