I’ll be honest, if I hear that an RPG game contains witches – pre-packaged genre characters predisposed to act a certain way in repetitive 100-hour long games – I exit stage left and run as far as my legs will take me. While Dragon Star Varnir does contain witches it’s neither tedious nor stereotypical, with its relatively short story-driven narrative focusing on close family ties and immense tragedy to conjure up empathy for its distinct cackle-free characters.

Our witches, reviled and hunted, live with a curse that forces them to ‘birth’ dragons – which terrorize the world – and die in the process. Ironically, they eat dragon meat to survive but if they consume too much, the dragon in their stomachs gets overexcited and bursts out sooner than they’d like. Eat too little and they lose their sanity. Not the most pleasant existence for our supporting cast.  

You play as Zephy, a brave knight who belongs to a group whose sole aim is to eradicate every single witch, only for him to be rescued by some and taken in. Told in a visual novel style, the fantasy-based narrative attempts to follow a logical arc as a whole but resets its boundaries too often to keep up, creating inconsistencies throughout. In short, get out your back scratcher you’ll be needing it for your head.

Perhaps due to its length, this title opts to omit the vast amount of lore most fantasy RPGs include and plays more like an episodic TV drama with broomsticks. There’s a lot that happens during the game’s 15-hour main story and despite it not allowing for much depth amongst its endearing characters, their relationships give the game life and their circumstances pull at your heartstrings.  

The biggest offender is a slightly sadistic system for three adorable witches which provides you with a moral quandary – do you save the children affected by the curse or eke out their life for items? Normally, this is a no-brainer; you’d save them – why would you not? Just look at them! Working out how much food keeps them sane while also preventing them from turning into a dragon is a challenge and will make you think you’re responsible for their deaths numerous times. Each progression in the story worsens their condition and it’s heart-wrenching hearing their complaints. Full disclosure – at no point was I ever unaware that I’m a grown man looking at a menu screen, but killing them all to see what would happen is so affecting that I couldn’t do it myself, I had to watch someone else do it on YouTube. Killing the characters as well as choosing certain option-based conversation choices also increases a ‘maddening rating’ that changes how the story develops and ends.

You also have the ability to interact with the 5 older witches through an affinity system that provides a story cutscene with each filled notch. Giving them gifts to improve your affinity acts as a relationship simulator while also adding character depth lacking from the main story.

Keeping the game compact is the fact that there aren’t any open maps to explore other than dungeon-crawling sections, with all story and RPG customization restricted to text and menus. As someone who loves nothing more than to explore an Open-World, I was surprised by how well this addition by subtraction approach works as the visual novel section paints a picture well enough to make an explorable 3D world redundant and the streamlined gameplay systems keep repetition to a minimum.

The battles largely function like many others in the genre and are enjoyable enough with nicely animated scenes for transformations and special moves. One interesting inclusion is the ability to eat the dragons you face in battle, which allows that specific character to absorb the dragon’s powers and is quite the addictive customization option for your favorite characters. Another difference to other standard RPG battle systems is the division of the battlefield into three layers – lower, middle and upper, which is most effective during boss fights with 3 layers of the enemy that must be defeated, removing abilities with each defeated layer.

The dungeons are small and the design of them could have been lifted from any RPG, but you can fly around on your broomstick or use your sword like a hoverboard, which needless to say, is awesome. This is especially true when you’re able to escape the enemy by squeezing through a tiny gap and is now how I wish every RPG game dungeon could be traversed.

After completing the game you are given access to extra story content and another dungeon as well as New Game+ which gives you the chance to attempt another of the 3 main and 5 character-specific endings, so there is a lot of replay value for those invested in the story and characters.

Escaping no one’s notice at this point, I’m sure, is the fact that this game is full to the brim of fan service. I’m not sure why the game feels the need to pour it on so thick especially when considering the quality of the product and how unnecessary it seems based on the game’s tone overall.

Dragon Star Vanir takes on the goliaths of the genre showing that a shorter more impactful punch is just as effective as a 100-hour behemoth, providing an experience both memorable and enjoyable with an adjustable story and addictive systems. While the inconsistency of certain plot points acts as a minor annoyance, the game’s biggest self-inflicting wound is not with the gameplay itself, but rather the game’s presentation handicapping its mainstream sales for potential sequels.

Have you ever found yourself playing the smash-hit ‘Getting Over It’ (Bennett Foddy), and thought “hmmm… if only I could attack and kill other players instead of climbing”? Well, if you’re in the 0.1% of people who happened have such a thought (or if you just enjoy physics-based fighting games), then Thermite Games has just the game for you – Wanba Warriors. With a distinctive calligraphy-based art style, pit yourself against a wide variety of enemies in 2v2 combat, each using their unique ink-brush-weapons and special abilities. But does this game score a KO, or is it just a ‘Sky Poopy’ (I promise that will make sense later on)? Well, let’s take a dive back in time and find out.

The first thing that will hit you when sitting down to play Wanba Warriors for the first time is… well, confusion, really. Entering the home screen, there’s not a whole lot of explanation of how to even load the main menu to start playing – it is just pressing ‘A’ to be fair, but being greeted by a blank title-page with no indication of what’s happening is a bit odd. In fact, this is a consistent theme of the game. Throughout, it straight-up slaps away your hand instead of holding it, which in truth I do appreciate. Far too many modern titles tell you where to go, what to do, etc, etc… Wanba Warriors has no intention of telling you a single thing about how to play it. Yes, there is a ‘How To Play’ section on the start menu, but even that doesn’t do too much to explain how you should go about vanquishing your foes. Instead, you learn through trial-and-error. Pick a character, fight, lose, learn. Although the immediate lack of guidance, mixed with a bizarre aesthetic, is a little confusing at first, I honestly found it quite refreshing once I got a hang of Wanba Warriors, and it certainly added a great deal of re-playability as I tried to master each fighter.

Let’s touch on that art style I just mentioned. The game is covered in a blanket of water-colour paint, with jagged character and UI design. Again, it was a strange experience at first making my way through the nooks and crannies of Wanba Warriors, as it felt closer to an acid trip than a video game, but after this initial takeback, it is easy to see the care put into the visual design. The game stays true to its calligraphy-based aesthetic in almost every way, and by grounding the game in this style, it allows for the finer details in the character design to really shine. Each fighter looks and feels distinct (minus a couple of clones), with each projecting a unique personality, which you either grow to love or hate (I’m looking at you Dooki). Similarly, despite being limited, the sound design of Wanba Warriors perfectly compliments it’s visual counterpart, adding enough depth and punch to your controller input(s) to ensure a sense of catharsis whilst playing. All in all, Thermite Games has designed a unique, beautiful and wacky game, with a great deal of charm.

The impressive design choices also extend into the gameplay of Wanba Warriors. With both movement and attacks almost exclusively tied to your weapon movement, it may seem at first rather basic in regards to the gameplay options. However, dig a little deeper, and you’ll soon realise that despite a relatively simple movement/attack system, there is a great deal of variety in how you traverse the battleground, and ultimately try to kill your opponent. I, for one, completely underestimated the ability to literally just swing my weapon the in opposite direction. Furthermore, with each character equipped with unique secondary and special abilities, there is a surprising degree of depth and variety offered by Wanba Warriors, even with a relatively small cast of characters. Of course, you’ll find your favourites (Dooki’s ‘Sky Poopy’ attack is a great combination with his flying ability, FYI) but there’s plenty to enjoy in selecting a random pool of fighters, and seeing how there fare against each other.

However, although there is significant variety in the gameplay, the same cannot be said for the game modes of Wanba Warriors. It honestly baffled me to only be limited to single player battles, local multiplayer and an arcade mode, as I felt the game had so much potential for online fighting. But alas, the only notable option outside of one-off battles is the arcade mode, which is… just a series of one-off battles. This was such a let-down for such a well-crafted game, as although I did rack up a number of hours in single-player fights, there was little to do beyond this. I understand as an indie game, supporting online multiplayer may not be an option for Thermite Games, but even adding more depth to the single-player experience with a story mode, unlockable upgrades, etc, would have gone a long way in adding longevity to the game. Nevertheless, I will concede that if you approach Wanba Warriors as simply a party game to play with friends, or something to waste an hour or two on, there is enough content there for an enjoyable experience.

Ultimately, this notable lack of content means there is little else to add on Wanba Warriors. The beautiful and bizarre aesthetic of the game certainly adds a dose of charm to the game, and well-designed characters and gameplay mechanics do create a large degree of variety to give the game noticeable depth. But that’s where it stops. Having tested (and potentially mastered) the base controls and roster of fighters, you might find yourself longing for more, but ultimately being starved of any game modes with real substance to them. This is a real shame for a game that I honestly had a blast playing. If Thermite Games were to implement online functionality, or additional single-player modes, I’m sure I would have little difficulty dropping many more hours into Wanba Warriors. But until then, I’ll unfortunately have to wait for a bored, rainy day before whipping out my Switch to drop some Sky Poopy’s on some enemies.