The Indie Informer

Games that play on nostalgia are often very hit or miss with me. The right kind of game uses nostalgic aesthetic as a jumping-off point to create something new in the space. Luckily, Paper Castle Games takes this approach with Wander Stars, a quirky, turn-based RPG packed full of compelling combat ideas and outfitted with a ’90s anime aesthetic.

It feels like we’ve been in a turn-based renaissance for the past few years, as studios have worked on reinventing and innovating the genre. Wander Stars does just that by creating a system built around the idea of creating special, named attacks that you’ve synthesized yourself. Each attack needs an action (kicks, punches, jabs, etc.), and then can be modified with multiple adjectives for various effects. Now, your regular kick turns into a “Super Flaming Kick” that deals more damage and has the chance to burn your enemies.

There’s a fun, Saturday-morning-cartoon logic that gets applied to every combat encounter as I build my attacks depending on the weaknesses and resistances of my enemies. Wander Stars feels like it’s a turn-based combat interpretation of Baba Is You or other word-based logic games that require you to be intentional with your relationship to language. There are a few hiccups here and there as I worked on discerning which adjectives are better than others. For example, I needed frequent reminders on if “Special” was a more powerful modifier than “Super,” but once I kept a modifier in my loadout for long enough, I got used to the nuances.

Not only is the word-based fighting novel, but it also plays into the ’90s aesthetic the game evokes with its visuals and story. Wander Stars is giving its own take on OG Dragon Ball as the story follows a young martial artist who wants to fight their way to the top and become a Kiai Master. Everything changes when an interplanetary being shows up, and the two join forces and fight together. Wander Stars is wearing its Dragon Ball inspiration proudly on its sleeve, but it’s not shallow. The aesthetics and story similarities are certainly there, but the game found a way to incorporate that aesthetic into its mechanics with its word-based combat system.

The system also leans into the typical martial arts anime trope where a character learns new moves from enemies by allowing you to copy an opponent’s abilities if you get their health low enough, but opt not to finish them off. Instead, if you show mercy and end the fight early, you can learn new words to add to your repertoire. What makes this system so solid, however, is that you can copy the entirety of an enemy’s attack if you have all the right modifiers. Wander Stars’ combat can be challenging, even when fighting low-level enemies, but if you pay attention to the moves that your opponents use that drain your health quickly, you can turn things around and use those same exact moves on them.

The aesthetics are a fun throwback, but the bulk of the game has you running through various overworlds on what essentially equates to a large, ’90s anime-themed board game. It’s a nice way to include a level system in an RPG by tying progression to each individual map. However, this was where I ran into my largest gripe with Wander Stars. The game is broken up into a handful of discrete episodes, and each map screen is a chapter in that episode. A tutorial tells you that if you die in a fight or leave the game mid-chapter, you’ll start back at the beginning of the current map screen you were on. Easy. When booting the game up after my first session, however, I was surprised to see that I was back at the very start of the first episode and not on the most recent map I had entered.

Apparently, I needed to load my profile in the main menu and start from there, not simply click “Start.” Turns out, after accidentally starting a new game, I had overridden my save and lost all my progress. I think it’s easy to attribute some part of this to user error, but I also found Wander Stars save system and menu to be confusing. Hopefully, this is something that gets fixed on subsequent updates, but it did color some of my feelings about the game.

Wander Stars is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a nostalgic trip down ’90s anime memory lane, but it’s even easier to recommend for anyone looking to try a fresh take on turn-based combat. I found myself smiling with recognition at many of the over-the-top tropes on display that, in retrospect, are pretty silly but nonetheless found their way into plenty of classic anime. Wander Stars has it all: buff grandparents who are skilled fighters, anthropomorphic animals who wear cool jackets, and bright-eyed protagonists who are ready to take on the world. Just make sure you’re careful not to accidentally wipe your save like I did. That might actually be the toughest fight of them all.