The Wanderer reading room
Idle RPGs, MMOs, browser games and mobile RPGs, taken apart properly. Every review carries a score out of 10, what the game does well, what it does badly, and the kind of player it is actually for.
A visually stunning, atmospheric return to the Zone whose biggest problem is the one thing longtime fans wanted most — its signature "A-Life" living-world simulation shipped broken or absent, according to a majority of this review's negative sample, and persistent performance problems have outlasted more than a year of patches.
6.5 / 10
A faithful, HD-2D remake of the 1998 fan-favourite that reviewers rate Very Positive and trending upward two years on, built around genuinely praised character writing and a deep private-action system, dragged down by companion AI complaints, an always-online requirement and a handful of specific, documented localisation changes from the Japanese original.
7.5 / 10
An officially licensed, gacha-collector Star Trek RPG that broke from mobile-genre norms by charging one fair upfront price instead of selling microtransactions, earning real goodwill from its own community — before the publisher announced in July 2026 that the entirely online-dependent game will be delisted 20 August 2026 and fully shut down 3 September 2026.
3.5 / 10
A well-regarded continuation of Cal Kestis's story that launched as one of the most notoriously broken PC ports of 2023 — sentiment has genuinely recovered since (recent reviews run well ahead of the lifetime score), but performance and crashes remain the single most common complaint in this outlet's sample even three years later.
7.5 / 10
A co-op dwarven mine-by-day, defend-by-night roguelite that arrived in Early Access with 100,000 wishlists behind it and immediately delivered on the hype — reviewers keep shouting Rock and Stone, and the one real complaint is that a single class is currently doing all the digging.
7.5 / 10
A dash-focused pixel-art action roguelite that turns evasion itself into offense, drawing inevitable comparisons to Wizard of Legend that its own review base says it doesn't survive, compounded by thin content and a developer who appears to have stopped patching two months after launch.
6 / 10
A stamina-combat action RPG whose opening third earns real praise for weapon variety, environmental art and a genuinely rewarding weapon-mastery skill system, undercut by a back two-thirds that reviewers say recycles enemies and thins out content, corroborated by Steam's own data showing barely one in eight buyers ever finishes it.
6 / 10
A miniature-diorama tactics game that improves on Wartile's combat by its own fans' account, held back at its 1.0 launch by selection and mouse-control bugs several reviewers call game-breaking, alongside crashes that persisted past release despite a genuinely long, well-supported Early Access run.
6 / 10
A weekly card draw from a mad ruler turns resource management into a genuinely dreadful moral gauntlet, and the concept is original enough that it sold a million copies and won an Indie Game of the Year award — set against a translation its own English-speaking audience has been calling unacceptable for over a year, and a loop that a large share of veteran reviewers say goes stale on repeat playthroughs.
7.5 / 10
A tactical fantasy co-op RPG built to replace board game night, with a genuinely standout value proposition — one copy covers a whole group of four — undercut for a large share of its own reviewers by a mandatory phone-as-controller scheme that several report they couldn't avoid even playing solo.
7.5 / 10
A Waterworld-flavoured survival crafting game still in Early Access, whose real fun core loop is undercut by genuine base-corrupting bugs and security concerns — and whose "abandoned by the developer" complaints, common in 2025 reviews, are directly contradicted by an active, multiple-updates-per-week patch history running right up to this review.
6 / 10
One of the biggest indie management-sim hits of the era, whose addictive stock-and-sell loop earned it a huge, devoted following through Early Access — a following that has spent the year since its 1.0 release documenting two real, dateable grievances in detail: unresolved AI-generated promotional art, and a 2026 DLC rollout that now more than doubles the price of owning everything the base game once implied was complete.
7 / 10
A genuinely original turn-based tactics game — wizards in kevlar defenestrating enemies through fixed, puzzle-like encounters — that critics and most players love, but that a real, persistent minority bounces off within a couple of hours for advertising a freedom the game doesn't actually offer, plus a quippy writing style that divides its own fanbase.
8 / 10
A free-to-play hybrid of idle progression and top-down action RPG shooting whose distinctive "active idle" design — punishing players for leaving it running unattended — earns it a genuinely loyal, extremely high-hour fanbase while alienating anyone who came looking for a conventional idler.
6.5 / 10
A lovingly faithful throwback beat-'em-up from the Streets of Rage 4 team that nails its 90s arcade nostalgia almost unanimously, undercut by a short story campaign, cross-platform multiplayer several reviewers say doesn't actually work as advertised, and a save-corruption bug reported as unresolved years after launch.
7.5 / 10
Read review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
A Fire Emblem-inspired SRPG built around shoving enemies off cliffs and into lava rather than around RNG-driven misses, backed by a genuinely powerful campaign editor and a developer reviewers repeatedly praise for responding to years-old posts — wrapped in a UI multiple high-playtime fans call the worst they've ever used.
7 / 10
A genuinely inventive "reverse city builder" about restoring wastelands to life, praised almost universally for its concept and art, undercut from launch by a length-and-price complaint even its fans echo, and more recently by a major free content update that split longtime players over how "chill" the game is supposed to feel.
7 / 10
A pixel-art love letter to 1980s and 1990s slasher movies that nails its genre homage and gore-soaked presentation while offering barely more interactivity than a walking simulator, best understood as a horror movie for gamers rather than a horror game.
6 / 10
A NZ$6.39 mouse-driven incremental about melting waves of monsters and climbing a permanent upgrade tree. Its isekai title promises an RPG that isn't there, its most useful reviews are barely 90 minutes long, and a late-game visual effect has drawn a genuine photosensitivity warning with no in-game way to turn it off.
5 / 10
A gorgeous HD-2D homage to Zelda-style action-adventure from the Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default team, undercut by a chatty fairy companion, a single overworld recycled across four time periods, and a full price that a meaningful share of its own reviewers say the content doesn't earn.
7 / 10
Read review of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales
A genuinely inventive sci-fi survival game about a stranded scientist cloning alternate versions of himself from different life choices, whose acclaimed writing and design were overshadowed at launch by a confirmed, publisher-acknowledged failure to disclose generative-AI content — including leftover AI prompt text found in shipped translations — that this review independently verified through press coverage rather than relying on review-corpus allegations alone.
7 / 10
A gorgeously art-directed Viking tactical RPG whose story and presentation draw near-universal praise even from critical reviewers — undercut by a specific, mechanically precise complaint that recurs across a full decade: the combat's action-economy design makes injuring and sparing enemies the optimal strategy, so killing them is often actively punished.
7.5 / 10
The trilogy's middle chapter, widely framed by reviewers as a "sophomore slump" that carries over the same combat-design critique this outlet found in the original game — plus a new complaint that its own attempt at a new mechanic (barricades) adds tedium rather than depth, and an ending several reviewers call less satisfying than the first game's.
7 / 10
The trilogy's finale scores meaningfully lower than either predecessor — a severe, still-live crash and freeze problem compounded by the absence of a manual save option can cost players 30-40 minutes of progress at a time, and reviewers who loved the first two games widely call the conclusion rushed and unsatisfying.
6 / 10
