Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson from YouTuber Rob Scallon to release this year

Back in 2023, YouTuber and musician Rob Scallon announced that for the last few years, he and his friend Jeff who has featured in a number of his videos, were working on a video game, a project titled Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson. Rob jokingly referred to it as “a guitaRPG” and despite a solid release date of 2024, it unfortunately got delayed. The game however is making a comeback, featured in the Feb-March 2025 Steam Next Fest, with a new release date of some time this year with a fresh new demo.

Now, the time between the announcement of Fretless and its new release date hasn’t been empty. New updates have been frequent about the development progress, and they’ve been very exciting. One of the best-known bass players of YouTube history, Davie504, has been brought onto the team as both an in-game NPC and as part of the OST team. Not only that, but Australian heavy-metal band Northlane is also going to be working on the OST and as a big fan of the band, I am incredibly excited for that.

Fretless is being published by Playdigious Originals who have a few other games under their belt including The Almost Gone and another upcoming game, Crown Gambit. The current demo is quite a substantial experience and shows a lot of promise for what the full release of the game might be like with the dev team very open in the Steam discussions on suggested improvements from those who’ve played it.

While there’s no official release date yet, the substantial demo and constant updates are a very promising sign that the game will be released this year and not be pushed back again. As a lover of rhythm games, indie experiences and metal music, I am very excited for the full Steam release.