When Onion Games says “bittersweet fairytale RPG,” I perk up. This is the Tokyo indie crew that brought back the cult classic Moon: Remix RPG Adventure and made oddball gems like Dandy Dungeon and Black Bird – games that look cute, go weird, and then stick with you. Stray Children is their newest, out today on Nintendo Switch and Steam (including Steam Deck players), and the hook is pure Onion: turn-based battles where you can fight – or use your words to change an enemy’s heart.
Stray Children’s premise reads like a bedtime story that wandered into a therapy session. A boy flips on a dusty console and gets pulled into a long-lost retro RPG where only children live inside a stronghold, while “Olders” – monstrous adults burdened by insecurity and regret — haunt the outside. It’s in this liminal space that Onion does what Onion does: blend whimsy with melancholy, then poke at the way RPGs usually work.
Mechanically, you’ll engage in turn-based encounters against those Olders. The twist: rather than defaulting to damage numbers, you can choose to “use your words” — reading an enemy, dodging volleys of raw emotion, and finding the right phrase to cut through their defenses. The studio frames it like delivering a “well-worded whisper,” which is peak Onion writing, but it also hints at a system with timing, observation, and empathy baked in.
There’s a launch-week 10% discount, and Onion’s broader catalog on Switch and Steam (Moon, Dandy Dungeon, Mon Amour, Black Bird) is getting a limited-time 30% cut too. If you missed Moon’s re-release or want a palette cleanser between 100-hour epics, this is a good moment to fill some gaps.
I’m excited because Onion has history here. Moon was the “anti-RPG” that asked you to love monsters instead of grinding them. Stray Children’s choice to talk instead of fight sounds like a cousin to that philosophy — closer to Undertale’s spare/act flow or Shin Megami Tensei’s negotiation than a standard “attack, heal, repeat.” But systems like this only work if they’re layered.
The big question I have: how many different conversational tools, states, and outcomes are there? If “use your words” boils down to a few canned lines that always solve a fight, the novelty fades fast. If it forces you to read enemy tells, surf mood swings, and commit to choices that can backfire, then we’ve got something worth chewing on. Onion’s best games hide surprising edges under approachable surfaces; I’m hoping the Olders’ bottled-up emotions aren’t just flavor text but mechanics you can actually learn and master.
On pacing, Onion’s work tends to favor tight, intentional runtimes over bloated checklists. That fits the fairytale pitch. A compact 8-15 hour journey with room for discovery and a strong finish would suit this premise far better than a sprawling world where the metaphor wears thin. We’ll have to see where Stray Children lands, but the studio’s track record suggests they know when to leave the stage.
2025 has been a buffet of big, beautiful, and exhausting RPGs. Stray Children feels like an intentional counterpoint: retro in framing, contemporary in theme, and small enough to actually finish before your backlog guilt kicks in. It also continues a growing thread in Japanese indie design — the EarthBound lineage of quirky kids facing very adult anxieties — without just being another nostalgia play. The “Olders” as literal monsters is on the nose, sure, but if anyone can wring grace out of that metaphor, it’s Yoshiro Kimura and team.
Localization is another quiet reason to be optimistic. Onion’s English scripts have punch — Moon’s re-release landed with a tone that felt handmade rather than machine-sanded. Stray Children’s worldwide English launch suggests they’ve built this with international players in mind from the start, which should help the humor and heart land where it needs to.
It’s on Switch and Steam day one, and Steam Deck players should be fine given Onion’s recent PC output — though I’ll withhold any “Verified” talk until Valve stamps it. The launch-week 10% discount is welcome for a niche indie; combined with the catalog sale, it makes testing the Onion waters less risky if you’re new to their flavor of weird.
One small practical note: if you don’t immediately see the game on the browser-based Switch store, check on your console’s eShop. New releases can lag on the web front-end for a bit, but it’s live on-device.
The music matters in Onion’s worlds, and the studio knows it. A two-disc CD set from Thelonious Monkees — the duo that scored Moon and other Onion titles — is already in production with pre-orders planned for winter. You don’t press a double album unless you’re confident the score stands on its own. Expect a mix that can carry both the whimsy of kids-only spaces and the ache of meeting your inner Older head-on.
If you vibe with offbeat RPGs that try to say something without lecturing you, Stray Children is worth a look. My only real worry is repetition: can the talk mechanic scale across a full game without feeling like a puzzle you solved in the first hour? If Onion threads that needle — with varied enemy behaviors, evolving vocabulary, and payoffs that change how you see the world — this could be their most approachable entry since Moon’s revival.
Stray Children is an Onion Games RPG about kids, monsters, and the things we carry into adulthood. It’s turn-based, it lets you win with words, and it’s out now on Switch and Steam with a launch discount. If you’re hungry for a shorter, stranger, and more heartfelt adventure, this looks like one to bump up your queue.
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