Wayfarer

Every adventure revolves around some great quest that appears to be impossible at first, yet the heroes involved usually manage to find a solution and defeat the forces of evil. Sometimes it’s pure luck, while other times they find a critical flaw in the bad guy’s defenses. Greater numbers can also be of help, especially when the enemy has magic powers of some sort.

Wayfarer is a very simple adventure game with roguelike elements and a basic control system, in which you control a hero who must gather an army in order to kill the evil lich wizard residing in the tower. There are other enemies that need to be dealt with before the final battle, which is how your hero gets the necessary money and fame to hire other warriors.

To begin with, the world map is fairly small, but it’s full of various places where bad guys do their evil things. In order to defeat them, all you have to do is approach the places in question and press the appropriate key. The quests range from easy to hard, and you win fame and gold by completing them, as well as lose fame if you are not strong enough.

In fact, it’s not very difficult to play the game, since all you need to do is move the mouse and press “F” whenever you are near a town or a quest. The sad part is that it doesn’t seem possible to die, no matter who you take on. The only penalty is losing fame if you fail a quest, which is not a very big issue. More fame allows you to hire more powerful warriors, including archers, mercenaries and wizards.

The final battle is as anticlimactic as the rest of the encounters, given the fact that all you need to do is get to the tower and make sure you have enough people. You can continue playing after the wizard is defeated, but there’s no point in doing so. The map is too small to keep you busy for too long, even if the quests become available again a few seconds after you complete them.

In the end, Wayfarer is probably not going to keep you busy for more than a few minutes, but it definitely has the potential needed to evolve into something bigger and better. The central idea is actually fairly interesting, especially since you can hire heroes.