With the last foe felled, you reach down into the grass and pick up what appears to be a chiseled rock. Your expert eyes, however, know its true nature. An elemental rune—just the type you were looking for. The elemental power of mist… You’ve been collecting runes of its ilk, and now with this final one…
Wait, no. You already have this one. You already have a stronger variant of it embedded into your sword, since the shopkeeper a few rooms back was nice enough to upgrade it for you.
You shrug and throw the magical rune back onto the ground, then lift your sword and step through the gate into the next room.
The Ultimate Roguelike
Developed by First Pick Studios, Endless Wander is described on the official website as “the ultimate mobile roguelike experience.” The title is indeed roguelike—you’ll wander through several zones, fight enemies each stronger than the last and make your way to the boss. If you die, you’re sent back to camp, where you can spend your hard-earned currencies, so maybe the next attempt will be more successful. Is it the “ultimate” experience, though?
Wandering Pixels
The mysterious portal that closed so long ago has once again reopened. It’s threatening to let a corrupting force into our world. Novu, a young warrior, steps up to the challenge to fight this ancient enemy, and maybe at the same time, find his long-lost sister.
The story of Endless Wander won’t win any awards anytime soon, but it serves the purpose it was made for: to give you context for your repeated (shall we say endless) attempts at beating the final boss. The title offers handcrafted pixel art to accompany you on your journey. Since a lot of Endless Wander’s gameplay revolves around various elemental powers, the pixel graphics look quite impressive thanks to these special effects.
Contrary to the above-and-beyond graphics, the sound design is passable at best. It does its job well enough—there’s a hit sound when you hit something or get hit, there’s a whoosh or a whish when you dash, or enemies move fast—but nothing stands out. There are some interesting tracks to accompany the gameplay, but neither the sound effects nor the music are particularly noticeable while playing. That can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your priorities.
Storm, Earth and Fire
There’s no roguelike without the option to create your own builds, and Endless Wander certainly gives you the chance to express your preferred playstyle. Even before starting a new attempt, you can equip items you acquired from previous runs. Not only do items give some raw stats, but they also have set bonuses. Mixing and matching the right pieces can give you special effects to further hand-tailor your preferred playstyle.
The title’s primary customization, however, happens as you progress through the various zones. Each room you conquer awards you with either a skill or a rune. Skills are your primary way of attacking. Things like a wide swipe, a jump attack or even an energy wave shot. You can only have up to three of these, and the order in which you slot them determines the order in which you use them while attacking.
Runes are elemental magic you can slot into your skills. When using those skills, their respective runes activate for a wide variety of effects. Some poison enemies, some send out electric shocks that jump between foes, and some cause meteors to rain down on anything hit. Different combinations of skills and runes can result in wildly different gameplay, and this is where the game truly shines.
Finite Wander
There are only a handful of available skills and runes (at least right now). For the sake of more consistent builds, that’s not a bad thing. However, the title is also lacking in variety in some other fields. There is currently only a single chapter of the story available, and playing through that chapter only gives access to three different zones. Three is a good number in terms of the length of a run, but having those three zones randomize between a handful of options would help keep things fresh.
After beating the game the first time, there are two main challenges left. First, there is the weekly game mode, which is a special playthrough with unique rules that change every week. Second, is the fracture, a semi-customizable run with scaling difficulty and rewards. If Endless Wander seeks to survive in the long term, it will definitely need to add more for players to do.
While the game is strictly single-player, it still houses a cash shop. Players can buy resources to speed up their progress through Endless Wander. During my time playing, I never felt like I needed to purchase anything. The few ads I had to watch gave me enough resources to get by just fine.
There is one exception. Aside from the main character, Novu the Knight, there are two more playable characters in the game. Archi the Noble Archer and Liora the Paladin, who each adhere to more specialized playstyles. This is a great way to give different baselines for people to play around with. The only problem is that Novu is the only character you have access to as a free-to-play player. The other two are only available in the cash shop and cannot be acquired any other way. It feels a little cheap to lock such a large customization option behind a paywall.
Endless Wander certainly has a lot going for it. The gameplay offers a lot of variety with modest options to work with. The weekly challenge and scalable difficulty give players something to come back for. But in its current state, the game is quite far from being “endless.” The developers made a great game to start with. Now they just have to make more of it!
