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.
Pew Pew Games' free-to-play co-op roguelite shooter has a genuinely enjoyable Hades-meets-Warframe core, but persistent performance issues, an unpopular kernel-level anti-cheat, and a review-bombing Discord promotion have left it drowning in Mixed reviews.
5 / 10
Read review of Terminull Brigade Review: A Fun Roguelite Buried Under Stutters and Suspicion
A solo-developed, first-person immersive-sim action game inspired by Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Overwhelmingly Positive across 567 English reviews for its chaotic, physics-driven combat and dark humour, with a fair complaint that its story campaign is short and some technical crashes cost lost progress.
8 / 10
Developer kinjo, working with Image Labo, delivers a compact fictional-language deciphering puzzle game about brewing medicine for a provincial town's patients from an undeciphered grimoire, earning strong, specific praise for its cozy deduction loop from a Very Positive review base, tempered by a repeated complaint about unfair logical leaps in its late puzzles and thin content once its multiple endings are exhausted.
6.5 / 10
Fix-a-Bug's satirical, pop-culture-soaked dungeon crawler, two years in public demo development, whose Mostly Positive review sample praises genuinely funny writing and charm but splits sharply over timing-based combat, a pointless crafting system, and repeated late-game difficulty and stability complaints.
3 / 10
A short, hand-drawn cozy-gothic point-and-click puzzle adventure through a cursed town, praised for its beautiful art and melancholic story but held back by puzzles most reviewers found too easy for a debut otherwise this accomplished.
7 / 10
General Interactive Co.'s The Diner at the End of the Galaxy blends restaurant management with intergalactic territory wars, entering Early Access on 18 November 2025 to a Mixed reception split between genuine praise for its retro pixel art and creative mode, and a heavily repeated, since-confirmed complaint that its developer studio has been struck off and the game effectively abandoned within months of launch.
4.5 / 10
Powerhoof's pulpy point-and-click thriller resurrects a murdered drifter seconds before his death and sends him sprinting through a conspiracy-laden noir mystery, earning an "Overwhelmingly Positive" score for logical puzzles and a breakneck pace that reviewers say reinvents the genre's usual rhythm.
8.5 / 10
The Drunken Beard is a cozy Overcooked-style tavern-management sim from small studio JMP Games, casting players as an innkeeper brewing beer, cooking dishes, and keeping drunken heroes from wrecking the furniture, and this review's unanimously positive sample finds a genuinely charming, chaotic management loop backed by a year-long public demo cycle, held back mainly by a lean amount of content for players who move fast.
7.5 / 10
A tower-defense/roguelite hybrid with a genuinely promising core idea, undercut by buggy execution, uneven difficulty balance, and a game that most reviewers say turns repetitive well before its content runs out — though an unusually responsive developer is actively working through the complaints.
6 / 10
A first-person psychological horror sequel from solo Chilean studio 99 Grados Games that sends players chasing missing friends into the woods, drawing consistent praise for its atmosphere and scares alongside recurring, specific complaints about pacing, technical polish, and one reviewer's flagged use of AI-generated imagery.
5.6 / 10
A solo-or-co-op casino management sim from Toxic Studio in which you build a gambling empire from scratch, Very Positive across 491 English reviews for its chaotic charm and genuine co-op fun, held back at launch by a widely repeated complaint that its mission-locked progression left almost no room for sandbox freedom — a complaint the developer has since directly addressed with a sustained, multi-month patch campaign.
6.5 / 10
Evil Trout Inc. follows The Roottrees Are Dead with a lavish remake of their own free itch.io text adventure, Type Help, adding full voice acting, hand-painted scenes, and new epilogue content to a chilling seance-machine murder mystery. The deduction is a little gentler than Obra Dinn, but the atmosphere, cast, and voice work make this an easy pick for genre fans.
8 / 10
Hypnohead's roguelite kingdom-builder ties every building's productivity to the literal gaze of its ruler, blending city-builder, tower-defense, and autobattler systems into a wildly original loop that earns "Very Positive" reviews despite real grumbling about grind, balance, and a save feature the devs had to patch in after launch.
7.5 / 10
A solo or co-op open-world RPG explicitly inspired by Morrowind, sending players to an isolated island crowned by a silent Tower to unravel a saint's disappearance, drawing a Very Positive Early Access reception that repeatedly marvels at how far a small indie team has pushed the "Bethesda RPG" formula, tempered by widespread reports of poor performance, GPU strain and early-launch bugs.
7 / 10
A cozy idle RPG from solo developer vkaike2, casting the player as a brown shih tzu named Ramon searching for his missing friends, earning a Positive launch reception for its charm and developer responsiveness, tempered by one detailed reviewer's honest complaint that its resource chains are too indirect for either true idle or true hands-on play.
6.5 / 10
An Early Access idle ARPG where an uncapped, skill-based party grinds levels well past a thousand while you check in occasionally to manage gear, weight and hunger, praised by its tiny early review base for genuinely comfy, chill idling, but consistently undercut by reports of party pathfinding so rough that it can take a full minute just to hunt down a single deer.
6.5 / 10
A roguelite deckbuilder from solo developer Mheep about a slot car endlessly circling a loop, drafting cards and charms to chase ever-higher scores, earning an overwhelmingly Positive launch reception for its build variety and hypnotic feel, tempered by a specific reviewer complaint about its price relative to its depth.
6.5 / 10
Theralite is DualBitz's turn-based sci-fi mining roguelike about digging as deep as you dare into a distant planet's crystal mines, and this review's unanimously positive sample, corroborated by a genuinely low achievement-completion curve, confirms a small, tightly-built, deliberately brutal roguelike that rewards patience and punishes greed.
7.5 / 10
Tapes without much tape The Tall Man Tapes casts you as a UFO investigator sifting through a set of found-footage-style recordings in the woods, chasing down alien lights and a mys
5.5 / 10
The Vampire's Bride is Waterfall's fully-voiced yuri visual novel pairing vampires with military uniforms across three intertwined couples, and this review's large, heavily Chinese-language sample agrees the first two chapters are genuinely excellent before a shorter, more rushed back half leaves several of the story's own biggest fans wanting a sequel to finish what it started.
7 / 10
The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish is a cozy story-driven photography game about riding a giant flying catfish through the clouds, spawning and photographing sea creatures made of mist, and this review's sample, unanimous at 75 out of 75 reviews, keeps landing on the same word for its story about death and impermanence — a punch to the gut wrapped in a retro-polygon fever dream.
8.5 / 10
Pri Games' tower defense/idle hybrid pairs satisfying wave-clearing spectacle and a no-fail-state design with a genuinely divided Mixed reception, as a large share of its review sample finds the campaign short, the endless mode broken, and the developer gone quiet on feedback.
3 / 10
A tactical narrative gamebook from A Sharp, the designers of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, sending a randomly-generated crew of heisters on short, choice-driven raids into hell, earning a Very Positive launch reception for its writing and art, tempered by honest reviewer complaints about heavy randomness, a vaguely-worded trait system, and thin strategic depth.
6.5 / 10
Tinker-World Arrival at Kedhreon is a hardcore, retro-inspired turn-based RPG from From The Cave and TibiSoft that pays direct tribute to Ultima and Wizardry, dropping players into the Northern Regions with almost no hand-holding to forage, craft, fight, and explore, and this review's strongly positive sample finds a genuinely deep, deliberately unforgiving old-school RPG whose harshest critic and most passionate fans agree on exactly where its systems still need tuning.
7.5 / 10
