Wander Hero

Bought the game on a whim because it seemed pretty unique in terms of gameplay and I've been enjoying it more than I thought I would. The ability to set your own custom difficulty has been a godsend for someone like me who isn't really the most strategic thinker and can afford to make a number of mistakes without getting too harshly punished.

The game ain't perfect but its actively being patched and the dev listens so I do expect great things from this game as I've already got my money's worth and do plan to have multiple playthroughs since there are multiple ways to engage the combat due to classes and card types.

If this game gets modding support it'll absolutely be something I keep coming back to play.

Total Verdict: a raw diamond in the making

This game is awesome. But playing you feel its not right there yet.
Some QoL-Updates are needed and highly anticipated (Showing buffs and debuffs, scaling of some bosses, Tutorial/guide when encountering the gathering mini-games for the first time (collecting, hunting, crafting and so on), better description of bonus stats (i.e. keen = armor penetration?, dispel = magic penetration and so on).

Mechanic wise its awesome. A very nice take of an rpg/partymanagement game with deckbuild rougelike mechanics. The "flipper"-attack is nice and make a lot of fun. The deckbuilding has a lot of possibilties (one-man army with attacks only or a deck full of units/mercenarys to command a army). There are a LOT and i mean A LOT of different units to play/build around with.

Translation-wise its not quite there yet. Most of the time you barly feel it, but sometimes it hits you like: Ah yes, that was translated via machine. Im around 20h in and havnt encounterd any gamebreaking-bugs after its 1.0 release. Some spells dont work like they should (i.e. the summon undead spell doesnt work at all) but i think those will be fixed rather fast. Since release the developer released like a patch every day (ranging from 500kb up to 30+mb)

You feel that its a indie game but i belive in the developer will deliver and keep on updating the game.
The price is absolutly justified.

Much of elements, including but not limited to :
DBG , Roguelite , Simulation , Isekai , Harem , Pinball , Gacha (not p2w lol) , Villain Role (Save the world, but like a Villain)
Recommended to try it !

遊戲有很多要素，包括但不限於：
卡牌構築，輕度rogue , 模擬經營 , 異世界 , 後宮 , 彈珠 , 轉蛋（不用怕，不需要氪金）, 扮演惡棍（魔王身上都得紋個你的那種）
建議親自體驗看看 !
P/S: 不過遊戲目前只有簡體中文，沒有繁體中文

If you've played Battle Brothers before, then you can expect the same type of gameplay from this. If you haven't, here's a brief summary.
You play as your personal MC who can be one of three classes: warrior, ranger, mage. As the class suggest, it's melee, bows, or magic. You pretty much are restricted into playing into one of these classes so you have to optimize well or else face an early death. Money is gained through questing, selling items, and "real-estate." You can invest into infrastructure in this game such as a tavern which will give you revenue every month. This investment system always makes the game feel like a drag to play as you will not see much of the benefits of investing early on your play through. Time is also a factor in this game. Certain events will pop up after a certain amount of days has elapsed so investing for the long term can be a bad move in the short term. The quests you will be receiving in the game are purely RNG based so you won't ever really know what you will be getting yourself into until they pop up. Quests can range from simple gathering missions to monster slaying missions to material trade quests. However, they have difficulty modifiers on them, making them very unpredictable on whether or not they would be worth spending your time on.
The twist about this game that makes it different from battle brothers is that it has a roguelike element to it, as well as a pinball combat system. If I had to describe it, it would be that it's a mismatch of genres. The roguelike element doesn't play an active role in this game as it's mostly relegated to dungeon maps and card rewards. If you lose in the game, you are able to come back stronger, however, that fact really doesn't matter as the like most other roguelike, it's only a minor boost that helps you in the short term rather than the long term which is what these games are centered on. As many of the system in battle brothers relies on long term investments, it's a very, very slow grind that will make you bash your head in due to the roguelike nature of the games of losing a battle, resetting your progress, and repeat. Even when I turned off perma death, just one loss was a huge enough waste of time to warrant regret for wasting hours on a dungeon that ultimately provided you with more loss than gains. The time system creates a feeling of utter waste as whenever you fail, those days that you spent on the dungeon still count in the game so you can spend hours IRL and days in the game all for it to amount to nothing. It's incredibly frustrating of a system. The pinball combat is slightly entertaining as you can get a neat combo going that catapults your power from 0 to 100 but the roguelike element really puts a dent in it as majority of the good cards that you can get are purely focused on the pinball mechanic while the rest of the cards that deal raw dmg are horrendous in comparison. Because your damage output can go from 0-100 through the pinball system, the flat dmg from your cards pretty much become useless later on in the game. Only cards with the highest rating and are genuinely good cards can compare to the dmg potential that you have in the pinball system. The pinball system is pretty much the best part of the game, but everything else drags it down so much that I can't even appreciate it.

And so, as someone who spent over 100 hours on battle brothers and thoroughly found myself regretting how little payoff there were to it, I really can't recommend someone to play these type of games that pretty much offer much the same experience, if not worst. Gameplay consist of a lot of grinding without much pay off. There is pretty much zero plot as the game is mostly just you wandering around, leveling up, getting money, and searching constantly for quests for you to do. Optimization is required for you to even have a remote chance of being able to last in this game. The monotonous nature of the game and the lack of plot that makes you feel like you're just repeating the same thing over and over again just for some spare change makes it ridiculously unsatisfying to play. I simply don't have the time to "wait until it gets good."

Stuff I found fun: Pinball combat, card/portrait creator ui
Not so fun stuff: Minigames for collecting, mining, treasure unlock, hunting, etc, town/character interactions, drawbacks of dying, time system, lack of plot, monster power creep, companions not staying on the field nor pre-deployable, leveling system, industry system, salary system, RNG element for levelup+recruitment

If you stopped at a boardgames store, picked up a copy of Catacombs, then started playing Slay the Spire on your iPad while walking home and got hit by a truck because you weren't paying attention, you might find yourself reborn in a world like Wander Hero. Theme wise you are reborn in a fantasy world a lead a mercenary troop. The story text is basic, but there is such a range of possible actions for you in the world that you can effectively make your own story. Find someone in town with useful skills for your mercenary company? Maybe you want to befriend them by doing quests and wining and dining them until they agree to join you. Or maybe you want to wait until they are alone, beat them senseless and then use magical slave gear to force them to serve you. Monsters besieging a city? Maybe you go drive them off and be hailed as a local hero. Or maybe you let the city be sacked, buy the ruins for pennies on the dollar, and rebuild it so that now everyone in it has to pay you rent every month. Better react quick to save it next time the monsters show up though - now its your property in danger! Just remember the clock is always ticking until the next demon lord begins his invasion, so don't slack off too much.

The main focus of the gameplay is combat. It is a pool / pinball like system where you hit your character and then they go ricocheting around the map doing damage when they bounce off enemies. The enemies on their turn do the same to you. On top of this there is a Slay the Spire style deckbuilder where you have a deck with cards that can do things like launch attacks, buff you, or summon allies. The deckbuilder encourages experimentation: you get lots of chances to add new cards to your deck, and options to thin your deck are plentiful too.

Outside of combat there is a ridiculous amount of stuff you can do. From getting better gear for yourself and companions, to buying and upgrading industry to get passive income. It is even possible to marry your companions, have children with them, and see the children grow up and join your team. This isn't accelerated at all, it takes a full 9 months of pregnancy and then another 4 years before your child is ready for battle. In a game where 1 year could easily take you 10 hours to go through, that is kinda insane. This game is really meant to keep you engaged for the long haul.

The biggest possible negative is the difficulty curve. Combat encounters can be roughly divided into normal battles (free wins that can be completed in seconds once you are past the early game), elite battles (usually still easy, but depending on the enemy type and random properties of the stage you are fighting on could be tricky), boss (can actually require you to have a solid understanding of your deck and play carefully), and demon king superbosses (shows up every 6 months of game-time at the default difficulty after the story event where the first one appears. You better bring your "A" game because these guys are scary). There is enough random possibilities in the enemy types and random stage effects that even if you have the elite deck of destroying everything sometimes you'll get match-ups that give you close calls. But if you are good you will reach a point where 90% of the battles are free wins for you. The other 10% are fun enough to make up for it though. If you aren't a veteran of deckbuilders then expect the default difficulty to humble you early on.

Recommended if you like deck-builders, tactical games, or isekai anime. Also a plus if you enjoy gearing and min-maxing your team.

A very original and interesting game. There is an English FAQ in the Guide section that will help you work out what's going on.

With a better translation this game could be a major hit. Hopefully the game does well and the solo developer can keep working on it!

Game has a lot of potential. If you are familiar with mobile games, this is very similar to Monster Strike.
That being said, the localization is TERRIBLE. The UI is extremely rough around the edges, and the game itself is lacking in a lot of polish/QoL.

Exhibit A: when you finish a level, everything just stops and a small arrow appears in the upper right. Until you realize you need to click that arrow to leave the level nothing else will happen.

This is a trend that continues into everything other part of the gameplay loop.
Due to the localization, many things are ambiguous, such as the crafting system that will have you gathering materials which you have no idea what they are for.

I can see this game one day being great. It is a unique refreshing gameplay for the roguelite genre.
In it's current state this game is not worth the purchase, although I desperately wish it was.

Great game, was pirating but I love it so much that I decided to buy and replay it on steam instead lol. However, there're still so many things to improve especially the UI and QOL stuffs. I'll just list some stuffs that I have in mind rn:

1. Make a tab system for the UI so it's easier to keep track of things pls, like tabs for hero, tabs for skill cards, and especially tabs for inventory that divide/sort stuffs into their respective category, having to scroll through hundreds of items to find what you need is a such a pain when you're grinding late game.

2. Make a status UI for unit during combat pls, it's strategy turn based game, it's ridiculous that you can't keep track of your units status, like what buff/ debuffs do I have right now, and how many turns do they last and so on.

3. Make a clearer explanation/calculation for some stats/skills pls, this might just be a translation thing but i really don't understand how I got a 150% crit perk and just ~50% of my atks are crit (dmg number with a star symbol right next to it), or how a mob suppose to do 7 dmg but he hit me for 15 dmg instead lol (maybe because my armor was -2), and don't get me started on the fatigued system when you're out of supply ( you get - armor per turn during battle when your supply is -3 or less).

4. Showcase/explain what you'll get when you put your precious skill points into production stats like forging/alchemy/cooking pls. Lvling up in this game is hard, every point is crucial, so I would love to know what recipe I'll get before using it. Like I was running around like a dumb ass without knowing at alchemy lvl 4 you can get a teleportation scroll recipe lol (it's easy to make to boost, and you can't find it in game without learning alchemy). or how I was pushing for cooking lvl 5 and 10 for max hp boost food then what I get is a ridiculous recipe which require 100x ingredients for a measly 2/4 hp gain lmao ( just 1 dungeon with boss kill net me way more than that, so I wasted 10 lvl for nothing).

5. More information/introduction about the villager npc in town and how to recruit them pls, some villager npcs (0 skills but have perk) provide insane stats boost like leadership/command/action +3 when in team ( you just invite and leave them at home, don't have to include them in your deck to take effect at all). There's next to 0 information about this ( like they mention it in 1 line "here's a town, here's some npc, have fun").

6. More information about learning skills from npc pls, you can actually learn combat skills from any npc you can recruit in game, but you have to increase their favourability to 70 1st, and somehow there's no in game guide about this system.

7. Provide a clearer goal + quest line in between pls. The game basically end at the 1st demon king, then it's free roam, until the next demon king (depends on your game dificulty), and you somehow has to defeat 6 of them, before the final boss appear. I think most people would stop at boss 2-4 since it's basically the same game loop without any goal to work toward to.

8. Adjust the request difficulty base on your progression pls, it's ridiculous that easy/normal requests still appear when you're at the 2nd demon king alr, especially when you need similar lvl dungeon to upgrade your char/card. Also, pls adjust the drop rate of higher lvl ingredient/soul pls, kinda dumb i got the same amount of soul in danger quest compare to easy quest lol.

9. Add a quick save/load button pls, this game has a lot of rng so save cumming is a must to save time/resources, so a way to speed up this process would be great

P/s: the devs seems like they're updating frequently so I have high hope for the future development of this game.

Great game. Lots of strategic depth and tactical pinball style battles.

Pros:
- Nice Artwork, decent sound quality
- Infinite replayability with procedureally generated worlds and randomized skills
- LOTS of strategic choices to make; where will you invest your valuable time?

Cons:
- Some translation issues (but you can still follow the story).
- Some QoL improvements needed (tabbed categorized items, scrollable item lists instead of tabs, sort-able tables, etc.)
- Lots of stuff is undefined and unexplained in the game; it could use an in-game encyclopedia.

The last Con would be the biggest issue, except there is a very good indepth guide from eharper256 on Steam which fills this purpose. Overall, the Cons boil down to minor gripes, while the Pros result in a very fun experience. I would also recommend eharper256's mod and picture pack to improve the variety of characters you meet in the game.

Definite a fun indie RPG that is well worth of your time. The game systems are quite complicated and you'll need to check the English guide in the guides section to get a good understanding of how traits and character progression works in this game.

But once you get past the initial barriers and learn this game, it's a great ride through another isekai and time just flies by. Strongly recommend.

As yall know we check out about 300+ new games a year over on twitch.
This one was a random gamble and BOY was i surprised
This COULD if ran with and getting PROPER UI work be GOTY material!
FUN/ REFRESHING/ FAMILIAR!

You can check out a first look here and find more like it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co9Iy1sSwHY

This is kind of a weird game which is a fusion of a few genres. There’s deckbuilding in it, but you run a mercenary company like Battle Brothers. You have mercenaries and heroes, in addition to skill cards and they all go into one deck. Mercs and heroes and even your main character can have permadeath enabled, which you set at the start along with the difficulty options.

The battle system is interesting, as it resembles a pinball machine. See some gameplay videos for examples. Mercs stay on battlefield when summon but they die easily. Heroes stay for only a round, and thus harder to kill but they do have more powerful abilities. Thus, your deckbuilding is an interrsting juggle of the these three types of cards. There are many ways to upgrade your deck by upgrading and getting cards, equips and relics.

The world is sandbox, and procedurally generated at start. You can be a trader or just do generated missions. There are also minigames related to mining, collecting, lockpicking and the like. You can skip them too and get average loot if you don’t want to do them. There’s also hundreds of cards to collect, and an economy to invest in with gold, which can be used for upgrades and paying wages.

All in all, I do like it so far though translation is rough now, and cards need some balance passes. Hopefully they flesh out the story more too.

Absolutely brilliant. I bought it out of curiosity and have in no way regretted my choice to do so.

Challenging at the middle difficulty ("Adventurer" I think it was called) without feeling unfair. A pleasant mix of rougelike deck-builder and strategic pin-ball (sounds weird but its great). The English translation is severely lacking in polish and some things are difficult to determine at the offset (such as what some gear bonuses actually do), but the game is well laid-out and intuitive enough that you will figure out all the important bits shortly.

I am loving the more active "skill-based" role I am taking (compared to most deck-builder rougelikes) in aiming my units attacks or for strategic placement. It makes the whole combat experience more engaging. Throw in the uniquely deployed mercenary management/party building system and you have a recipe for success. I am looking forward to see how this game continues to expand and I am currently thoroughly enjoying my time with it now.

I like it but it's a very "rough" game. See at the end.

The combats are basically a Card + Pinball combination and it's pretty neat.
You also have "units" that count as cards and that you can deploy on the field.

The world aspect is alright. You go around to do quests and invest in cities to get loot/money.

I'm currently max level (30) with a combination of cards and units that basically let me finish all the fights on the first round.

----

Lots of things are not explained in this game and you have to figure them out.

The translation is very bad but good enough to make this playable.

One stupid example of that is how to end/win the game.... Like... I'm at day 1900 and the overworld still throw me boss at me after a couple of months but I already clear all the first on the first round...

Some mechanics are not properly explained... Like the tiered encounters that gate certain upgrades. Example. If you have a character that is upgraded to tier II you need to do "Danger" or "Fatal" encounters to be able to upgrade them further in the Templates. Otherwise it won't give you the option to do so...

Review - 7.9 hours
A fantastic game utilizes minor aspects of a roguelike deckbuilder game that utilizes a main character, companion, and mercenaries. It is a peggle style game when you pull a character and launch your attack to deal damage to enemies and it has a large gameplay loop. The map are randomly generated and you can sell specialty goods in a medieval world. You travel through a campaign map and complete quests and attempt to last as long and possible and defeat the final enemies(Timed events). I don't understand the point of rerolling talents at the start however, and I believe you should just get what you receive and only reroll once or twice maximum.

The base gameplay is solid but the game still need a lot of polishing most importantly the translation and rebalancing stuff. There needs to be a hovering tooltip to show what the town on the map has instead on the small icons which tell nothing. Progression is a big issue I had since I was stuck with so many boring easy quests after the first demon horde and the game would not give me hard quests other than one boss quest which decimated me on the boss level because I couldnt properly level up my character/deck/mercenaries which is mainly locked to quests of your recommended difficulty(which isnt shown by the way).

The random bonuses on level up seem to be very unbalanced as well as you can get really good ones like extra action points, mercenary limits and hand size and also really awful ones like 5% better trading prices or 5% chance to save a dead mercenary. You're only given 3 options randomly which can easily make the game harder for you if you get bad ones early. From reaching level 11, none of these seem to get higher bonuses with level other than stacking them.

surprised to see an innovative game of this degree in our times. But stats with their abbreviations sure do need better explanations. It'd be great if hovering over a stat showed exactly what stuff like CTP meant, what its use is and how it is calculated. I like to play my games on highest difficulty which this game does deliver yet also frustrates when you don't even know what stats you have and what how things work... imagine fire emblem without knowing what speed is. Also changing system language to chinese just to run a steam game is extremely annoying.

"How is this game so good?!" - me, multiple times during my nearing 200 hours

Look, the gameplay is actually incredible. A perfect fusion of deckbuilding and billiards/pinball, with a reasonable open world and stuff to do between quests to upgrade your character and companions. The gameplay itself is super addicting and incredibly fun; each turn is a puzzle between your card draw from your highly customizable deck, mercenaries who persist turn over turn, companions are much stronger but who don't persist for multiple turns, and your own pinball attacks to see if you can defeat all the enemies, with plenty of different challenges - counterstrike makes melee attackers take damage, shields and terrain can block projectiles (but not all projectiles - some spells and mage companions can shoot through). In the mid/late game, you try to finish most fights in the first turn, though bosses usually really do feel like bosses; the final demon king had me sweating! The balance feels pretty solid to me, even if some cards are way better than others of the same rarity.

Also, the custom image editor is built in and the cleanest implementation of custom images I've seen; no external editing or resizing necessary - just large source images.

The one concern that might turn people away is honestly the isekai harem thing going on; some people might find it a bit skeezy. The most scandalous images are already here on the store page, and the rest of the theme is barely present in game at all - you get the same static images on the companion character sheet and loading screen and that's about it. The "slaves" in game are identical to other companions except for fewer abilities and reduced stats at higher cost. The store page definitely leans into the theme a LOT harder than the game itself.

Anyway, I went in expecting the usual shallow anime girl game, was surprised by the incredibly synergistic card/billiard mechanics, and honestly if you didn't immediately close the store page in disgust on reading the initial blurb or seeing the first couple of screens, you'll probably really enjoy the game.

This game is completely bugged and unplayable! Even with the fix enabled through the options menu it still is unplayable and bugged all the way through. Nothing works! And on top it runs at unlimited fps regardless of driver settings or trying to force fixed fps through other software causing to drain redicilous amounts of power.
Just avoid it until they put some care into this mess!

The Engrish is much strong on okational contitions whech might occcur during playing game.

Seriously, there are still a couple buttons that aren't translated yet. Despite the wonderful poetry, this is a very fun little game.

It's like, roguelike marbles plus a deckbuilder with stats and also managing a mercenary company. You can get a stupidly powerful start, or struggle to make it out of the tutorial. The first thing I tried was a mage who managed to get a less health trait and got murdered by tutorial goblins.

The town names are hilarious poetry. "Fake Skin" etc.

There's 2 glaring bugs that basically makes the gameplay impossible:
1 - Everytime there's a 'twice damage' effect or non dash attack from the enemies, game seems to wait 10seconds btwn each iteraction. Now, imagine using a 'combo punch' that does 4 x3 damage. 30 seconds to see it finished happening.
2 - The rain debuff completely shut down any non-card (non-skill) damage. The 5 minutes battle becomes a 30minutes battle until u rotate ur cards enough times to be able to kill by damage everyone.

Well, I picked this up at a whim because I saw Waifu pinball Battle Brothers. Now, I'm 100 hours later having written the English steam guide (lol).

Its absolutely one of those "just one more quest" types of games, even if the weird fusion of Battle Brothers, Peggle, Slay the Spire and various anime (especially Konasuba and other Isekai) references shouldn't work, it really does.

The English translation is still dodgy at this point, but its more weird and funny than unplayable, and obviously machine translated- I offered some suggestions for some of the weirder terms, as I'm an English Graduate, but the dev said they would be hiring a professional before it comes out of early access.

Keep in mind its a bit like Etrian Odyssey as well; in so much as it expects you to abuse it's mechanics as much as you can and optimise as much as possible. If you can break it, you probably should, because the late-game does not pull any punches if you've made poor deck, heroine and mercenary choices. Starting a character involves a perk re-rolling process akin to the old Wizardry games, which can take you a while.

Cards, as I review in my guide, range from "absolutely mental" to "why does this exist?", but actually, I don't think that's necessarily bad, because you have a lot of opportunities to gain and remove cards in the game, (way more than a given Slay the Spire run) and you actually WANT to reject them in many cases, since not only do you want a slender deck, but rejecting also gives you Souls, the currency used in lots of things from events to levelling up.

I've had absolutely no trouble running the game, and I'm very curious about the other reviews that mention that. I am still on Windows 10 with a 1080p monitor and an old Radeon RX580 custom build, which is ageing but still relevant, so part of me wonders if they're trying to run it on potatoes, since it is still a Unity game with lots of shaders and effects.

In any case; if you like games with a nice mix of strategic and tactical decisions, deck-building, optional rogue-like elements (you can enable perma-death), and plenty of waifu's, this could be the game for you. My Steam guide has a lot of information including a video of high level play, if you want more info as well, so check it out.