A Legionary's Life

Text-based Roman soldier RPG with turn-based combat and permadeath

Alessandro Roberti · Released Sep 25, 2019

Reviews: Very Positive; 87% of 2,498
Recent reviews: Not enough recent
Playing now: 4; peak 24h 13
Steam Deck: Untested
Last update: 11 months ago; Oct 4, 2025

Free demo available, 0 playing it now: get the demo.

What is A Legionary's Life?

This mostly text-based RPG puts you in the role of a Roman soldier during the Second Punic War and beyond. You make decisions through attribute and skill checks and fight turn-based battles as you try to survive or rise through the ranks. Death ends a run, but your past performance earns points for your next soldier.

For you if...

+you enjoy stories set in ancient Rome
+you like turn-based combat with tactical choices
+you enjoy building a new character after each death

Not for you if...

−you want to reload after losing a character
−you prefer real-time action over text-heavy decisions
−you dislike replaying familiar events across runs

What players say

87% of 2,498 reviews are positive

Players praise the writing, Roman setting, and turn-based combat. Many complain that random outcomes can make combat frustrating and that repeated events grow tedious across runs. Some also find the mechanics poorly explained.

Screenshots and trailer

A Legionary's Life system requirements

As published by the developer.

Minimum

OS: Windows 7 SP1+
Processor: Any CPU with SSE2 instruction set support: Intel Pentium 4+, AMD Athlon 64+
Graphics: Any graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Storage: 200 MB available space