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 genetics-driven frog-breeding sim from one half of the APICO team, built around discovering and cross-breeding dozens of frog species across a waking and a dreaming world -- beautifully drawn and warmly received, with real friction in its navigation, inventory and pacing that a year and a half of updates hasn't fully resolved.
8 / 10
A NZ$10.29 desk-diorama ant colony sim from a solo student developer, launched unfinished on 1 April 2022 (unintentionally, on April Fools), publicly apologised for, patched twice over the following five months, and then left behind — a review from November 2023 says the developer "completely abandoned" it, and the game's own tiny nine-review corpus backs that up.
3 / 10
A neon-pixel run-and-gun roguelite that wears its Binding of Isaac influence openly and well enough to earn Strong critical reviews and a Very Positive Steam score, though a real share of players say the grindy unlock structure and a shrinking item pool wear thin faster than the genre's best.
7 / 10
Nomada Studio's follow-up to the beloved GRIS is gorgeous by near-universal agreement and just as consistently marked down by its own fans for one specific addition — combat — that a majority of its detailed critics say undercuts the emotional, puzzle-led magic that made its predecessor a modern classic.
7.5 / 10
A party-based steampunk-versus-magic RPG that launched into Early Access with real Arcanum and Baldur's Gate 3 comparisons in its favor — and then, by this review's full read of its negative sample and its own public patch history, went almost a year without a real content update, turning early "great potential" reviews into a wave of "the game is dead."
4.5 / 10
Team Ninja's samurai-era Souls-like pairs one of the deepest stance-based combat systems in the genre with a Diablo-style loot flood that a large, vocal share of its own fans say fights against everything the combat is trying to do -- a disagreement that hasn't moved in nine years of reviews.
7.5 / 10
A genuinely satisfying Klondike gold-rush mining tycoon sim from a studio whose previous Early Access title was abandoned and delisted — a history that shadows this one every time a years-old bug resurfaces or a new paid DLC lands on what a chunk of the audience still calls beta.
6.5 / 10
A darkly satirical colony sim crossed with a first-person roguelite shooter, where you build a totalitarian regime and personally lead mechanised assaults against alien threats — a strong Early Access launch overshadowed for some players by the game's previous life as an NFT-funded project called Earth From Another Sun.
7 / 10
The Phantom Thieves trade the Metaverse for a grid-based tactics spin-off, carrying over Baton Pass and weakness-exploiting combat into cover-based skirmishes. Sharp presentation and a near-unanimously praised soundtrack sit on top of a short campaign that most of its own reviewers say is priced for a much longer game.
6.5 / 10
A dark-comedy business simulator about running an online drug empire, launched into Early Access in January 2023 by solo developer PiCorp and left there, seemingly untouched, ever since.
4 / 10
A NZ$6.95 Vampire Survivors-style bullet-heaven from Amrita, Very Positive across 470 lifetime reviews but carrying a consistent, dated accusation from its own players — 19 of the 52 most-helpful English negatives name Vampire Survivors directly, several call it a near-identical asset-flip, and the developer's own patch history shows active Early Access support stopping the moment 1.0 shipped in February 2023, replaced since by two entirely new games from the same studio.
5.5 / 10
A solo-developer Early Access roguelite deckbuilder that casts you as a corrupt politician climbing from community leader to world leader, with fast five-to-ten-minute campaigns, a satirical Bloc-management system and cross-run meta-progression — reviewed here on a genuinely tiny early sample, but every one of the reviews it does have recommends it.
6.5 / 10
One of the finest metroidvanias in years, nearly universally loved on its own merits and just as consistently marked down by its own players for a mandatory Ubisoft Connect launcher — a friction so persistent it's still generating complaints in 2026, on a game whose acclaimed development team Ubisoft disbanded within weeks of release after a sequel was refused.
8 / 10
A solo-developed Roman city builder that pits Caesar 3-style urban planning against the Hydra, the Minotaur and Cerberus -- a striking-looking game whose 1.0 launch, six months after it started, split its own audience between "finally complete" and "rushed and abandoned."
6 / 10
A falling-sand physics factory game — every grain, drop and spark is a simulated resource — that went into Early Access on 13 August 2026 to a near-unanimous reception, backed by Hooded Horse and pre-release press comparing it to Factorio, Terraria and Noita all at once.
8 / 10
A "Hades meets Monster Hunter" action roguelite from a small team at Ankama, the studio behind Dofus and Wakfu, built around slower, methodical part-breaking combat rather than fast Hades-style dodging -- Very Positive across 236 English reviews for its art and weapon-swap mechanics, but dogged from launch through mid-2026 by thin initial content and hit-detection complaints that a full year of free updates hasn't fully resolved.
6.5 / 10
A solo-developer idle/incremental game about growing a server farm from a battered laptop to planet-scale compute — three genuinely distinct minigames, a finite Singularity ending that Steam's own achievement data shows a striking share of players actually reach, and no microtransactions or ads anywhere on a NZ$4.79 price tag.
8 / 10
Asymmetric's prohibition-era, Lovecraft-flavoured follow-up to the award-winning West of Loathing -- Overwhelmingly Positive on its own considerable merits, with a review sample so consistently framed against its beloved predecessor that "not quite West of Loathing" is practically this game's second title.
8 / 10
Ubisoft's long-delayed pirate action RPG launched to a Mixed reception it has never fully shaken — this review reads the full arc from launch-week server chaos through two and a half years of live-service seasons, and finds a genuinely enjoyed core loop that its own invested fans still won't recommend at full price.
5.5 / 10
A solo developer's idle kingdom-builder about growing an army of slime adventurers, with a genuinely varied opening few hours undercut by the one complaint an idle game can least afford — no offline progression — plus reported crashes and a late-game pace that reviewers describe collapsing into a grind with unclear win conditions.
4.5 / 10
A NZ$7.39 pixel-art sci-fi platformer whose energy-sword combat and moody planet-hopping presentation earn genuine, specific praise across its small but positive Steam corpus, undercut by a purchase-gated weapon ladder several reviewers call grindy and linear, five worlds that read as more similar than different, and a name that at least two players say oversells how much of a roguelike it actually is.
6.5 / 10
A solo-developer incremental RPG where you buy upgrades, unlock companions and grind through numbered stages toward a final boss, priced at NZ$2.99 and finished by most reviewers in a single sitting -- earning it a rare, near-unanimous verdict that it's honestly worth the asking price, alongside a pointed complaint that it's far shorter than the genre veterans it's priced against.
6 / 10
An Americana-infused space trucking sim that launched without control remapping — locking out at least one player with a physical disability entirely — before a fast fix and nearly two years of steady, ongoing support. This review reads the whole arc, not just the rocky opening week.
6.5 / 10
A solo developer's genuinely distinctive idle cafe that lives quietly on your taskbar while you work, doubling as a real productivity tool with a built-in Pomodoro timer and task list — warmly reviewed for its ambient jazz and hands-off charm, with minor rough edges around its tutorial and a couple of upgrade-gated features some reviewers feel should be free from the start.
7 / 10
