The most completely realised world in the directory sitting on top of the thinnest game — NPC Fidelity 5 and Signature Design 5 against Mechanical Depth 1 and Player Agency 1.

Tidefall is a dark-fantasy “living world” RPG from Infinity Fiction, built on the D&D SRD and set on an island under perpetual storm. It is in open alpha — publicly playable, no invite — which is why it now carries a score. Everything in it is hand-made first and run by a model second: the quests are written by people, the thousands of illustrations are drawn, the soundtrack is scored, and the AI’s job is to perform that material rather than to invent replacements for it. Infinity Fiction names no model anywhere: it describes the engine as its own “Living World” and character responses as “curated by Responsible AI”, and publishes no roster.

That is an unusual bet in this category, and it produces the most lopsided score on our board.

What It Scores

Tidefall scores 3.3 out of 5 — joint fifth on our benchmark, level with Master of Dungeon and behind Voyage at 4.4, Craft at 4.3, Friends & Fables at 3.9 and NOPOTIONS at 3.8. It is the only entry we have rated that holds three 5s and two 1s at once.

Three axes are at the ceiling. NPC Fidelity — 5, the second we have ever awarded and the first to a platform running a full campaign rather than a chat: characters have goals of their own and hold them against you. Ordered to flee to safety, a man we were escorting simply would not go, because his wife was in the house behind him. Signature Design — 5 for an identity so specific you could be dropped into a scene you had never seen and name the game from the interface, the sound and the light. Determinism & Fairness — 5 because the outcomes are authored: a curated encounter cannot be talked into agreeing with you the way a generated one can.

Two are at the floor. Mechanical Depth — 1: no inventory, no currency, no journal, no party indicators, and no enemy readout — we fought whole battles against “a swarm” without ever learning how many opponents there were. Player Agency — 1: puppeting is genuinely absent, and railroading is total. The rails run through the small moves as well as the story beats, and with the game master refusing out-of-character input there is no way to argue with one.

The two middling scores are the honest ones. Memory & Continuity — 3 and Longevity — 3 are both held up by authorship — a curated campaign cannot drift the way a generated one does — and both are held down by the same thing, because the longer you play the more visible the rails and the missing systems become.

Read the full review for the campaign behind those numbers, and our first look for the state of the game in July 2026.

Pricing

Verified on Tidefall’s pricing page, 28 August 2026. Payments are taken by Paddle as merchant of record.

Plan	Cost	Limits & Features
Free Demo	$0, one-time	Full game access, roughly 90 minutes of play
Unlimited (Subscription)	$14.99/month, billed monthly, cancel any time	Unlimited play, updates & expansions
Founder (Lifetime)	$299 one-time	Unlimited lifetime access, founder perks & asset drops, design an NPC or creature for Tidefall (292 seats remaining at time of writing)

The subscription does not meter turns, which puts Tidefall with Friends & Fables rather than with the credit-metered platforms — see what an AI RPG actually costs.

Product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners; Arcanum is not affiliated with Infinity Fiction or with Wizards of the Coast.