Wander Hero

Genre: Card RPG / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

I’m not gonna’ bury the lead here, I’m just gonna’ come out and say it – Wander Hero is a game with a great idea that is absolutely ruined by the execution. Released on PC in 2024 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2025, Wander Hero is a game that combines elements of a Card RPG with Arcade-style gameplay that has players flicking round discs representing their heroes at enemies, with each ricochet against an enemy counting as an attack.

The presentation here is decent, with static anime-style character art and simple 2D visuals for the gameplay, with forgettable but suitable medieval fantasy-style music. That’s not the problem here.

The problem is that this game absolutely requires a touchscreen to be played… but then it makes all the text in the game super-tiny so it’s almost impossible to actually read it on the Nintendo Switch’s screen. I really wanted to like this game, but it is an actual RPG, and in order to see the descriptions of cards or other details on screen, I would have to dock my Nintendo Switch…. but then, if I wanted to make an attack, I had to go back to handheld mode again. And even then, sometimes characters inexplicably don’t react when you tell them to attack.

What’s worse, the analog sticks are largely unused here – they could be used in place of the touchscreen when docked to set up your angle and strength of your attack… but no, this simple sensible feature wasn’t put into the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Because of this issue, I can’t really play Wander Hero for any significant length of time. I feel forced to keep swapping between handheld and docked mode, to the point where I get a strong urge to stop playing altogether. I suspect there’s a good game buried under this issue, but this is an issue that is so nasty, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

tl;dr – Wander Hero is a game that combines Card RPG gameplay with a game mechanic that has you flicking discs representing your character to ricochet off enemies to attack them. It’s a really clever gameplay concept, but unfortunately, this game requires players to use the touchscreen for combat, but then makes most of the game’s text so tiny on the screen that it’s unplayable whether you play it docked or in handheld mode. There may be a great game hidden under this issue, but if there is I cannot play it.

Grade: N/A (F)

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