Truth be told, I’m still not sold on the “Bullet Heaven” genre. Despite its name, the genre is definitely here to stay, and there always seems to be fun new takes despite the fact that Vampire Survivors sort of started it without much room for improvement. While I’m not sure Wanderburg is an improvement (I haven’t played it yet), I conceptually like its approach of giving you a modular medieval castle tank that can suck up sheep and unleash cannon fire on your enemies. And it’s out today in early access!
Wanderburg, like its predecessors, is a roguelike, although as I write this I’m now wondering if that’s a no-brainer in the genre, which seems slightly frustrating given that neither genre name is particularly prescriptive. You start with a castle that’s also a tank, armed with a single starting weapon, like a cannon, to defend yourself. The idea is that as you level up, you expand your castle, increasing it in size and strength as you go.
Growth depends on several elements. For reasons unknown to me, hoovering up cattle and flocks of sheep can help you achieve this, but so can villages fleeing terror and destroying rival strongholds. As you level up, you can choose new modules to attach to your mobile castle. These can be new building items, like a barracks that can spawn troops to fight alongside you, or weapons like a giant hammer to crush enemies to one side of you. It also looks like you can change your wheels, with the option even to upgrade to legs. The movement seems almost bouncy, and I love how everything looks like it’s about to topple over at any moment.
As mentioned, Wanderburg is releasing today in Early Access, so don’t expect a completely finished game. As it stands, the main loop is there, but there are plans to add more things to do and manipulate, as well as make changes based on community feedback over the next six to 12 months. If you like one of the projects offered by the developer Randwerk, then you get it on Steam now.
