Post Script
Why Roadwarden’s default difficulty is the best way to play
Just after starting Roadwarden, you’re asked to choose between three difficulty settings, and must commit to that choice, since it can’t be altered later on. Standard mode, it says, is for those familiar with RPGs, setting a 40-day limit to explore this perilous wilderness. There is a Casual option instead, “for those focused on the story” (more on which later), while Restrictive has been designed “for the returning roadwardens”, reducing the limit by ten days while raising the damage you take at nighttime (likewise).
By then, you have already been told that this will be a lonely journey, and that taking the job of roadwarden is not only to accept that struggle, but to embrace it. Yes, occasionally we feel our character’s lack of progress all too keenly. But we can’t say we weren’t forewarned, and the knowledge that this is supposed to be a hostile place helps; setbacks are less frustrating when they’re expected. Besides, you rarely seem to be having quite such a tough time as many of the other settlers there.
But the main reason we’re glad we opted for the default difficulty is that the Casual setting not only makes quests more forgiving and gives you more cash in your pockets at the start, but also removes the time limit. In theory, you could solve just about all the region’s mysteries on a single playthrough, ticking off every objective on your quest list before triumphantly returning home.
Granted, that means you get to see every storyline and subplot through to the finish. But here, we’d argue, the struggle is the story. Anyone who has ever freelanced will find themselves empathising with their character. One of Roadwarden’s great triumphs is how successfully it kindles that familiar sensation of being spread too thinly, of taking on more work than one person can comfortably handle – if only because you are profoundly aware of the potential consequences of saying no.
Yet in the second half of the game, you will almost certainly (as we did) find your approach changes. Knowing time is against you, that you can’t do it all, and that – like your immediate predecessor – you will leave the peninsula with several people cursing (or rolling their eyes at) your name enforces a narrower focus. That pressure feels essential to everything Roadwarden is trying to do with its fiction. This is a grim fantasy world where you are eking out a living, doing what you can within your limited means to make it a better place. It shouldn’t feel like a power fantasy where you can achieve all your goals.
We would go even further and add that starting a Restrictive playthrough after the credits roll is a bad idea. The notion that a returning roadwarden would take more damage at night feels arbitrary – why would someone with experience suffer more from enemies that are known quantities? Besides, assuming you’re planning as carefully as you should be with such a stringent time limit, it’s a rule of which you rarely fall afoul. And while the abundance of variables here makes a replay tempting, your knowledge of the region gives the player an advantage that their avatar should not possess. They are, after all, an interloper.
So, yes, this is the kind of game where your second journey will doubtless be markedly different from your first. Certainly, there are skirmishes where we naturally wonder how we would be getting on with the fighter’s fine gambeson (as opposed to our worn one), steel axe (when ours is made of iron) and crossbow (persistently out of our price range). And yet it’s not a criticism of Roadwarden that we feel so strongly that our first visit to this peninsula will be our last, at least for a while. Rather, it’s a tribute to how deeply immersed we are in the role that the story of our roadwarden’s journey – mistakes, mishaps, disappointments and all – feels like the one that should be passed down by those we leave behind on the peninsula.