I’ve been playing a game called Wayfinder recently and been having a blast. The game has been on a long journey, it started out as a MMO-lite dungeon crawling action RPG, but the publisher, Digital Extremes of Warframe fame, pulled out as the publisher and left the devs Airship Syndicate high and dry. So Airship Syndicate went back to the drawing board and dropped all the MMO aspects and just released the game as a offline action RPG that can do up to three player co-op via P2P so no servers involved. The developers, Airship Syndicate, are refugees from Vigil and a lot of the team that made Darksiders 1 & 2. They made the LoL Ruined King game, Battle Chasers, and Darksiders 3.

Also since they dropped the MMO aspects there are no microtransactions! You can unlock everything by just playing the game, which is filled with all sorts of cosmetics and things to unlock. They have a supporter pack up that they did in partnership with Critical Role if you feel like throwing some extra support at the devs, but that’s the only MTX other than an old founder pack that you can’t buy anymore. But since they dropped the MMO aspect game is totally offline now you can use a save editor to get all the founders pack stuff if you want.

I’ve been quite hooked so far. The art style is wonderful, this glitzy neon drenched steampunk-ish fantasy that takes some obvious inspiration from LoL/Arcane and WoW but really has its own flair that makes it distinct.

Combat is pretty straightforward third-person action RPG. There are big outdoor zones with lots of little secrets and puzzles to find, but most of the game is running randomized dungeons or killing bosses. The dungeons have a surprising amount of secrets in them so you’re rewarded for looking around and exploring instead of just plowing through and ignoring everything. You choose from characters with 4 abilities and a pretty wide range of weapons with their own ability. There are lots of stats customization which makes it play a lot more RPG than you’d think at first the more things you unlock.

Story is pretty good. Good voice acting with funny and serious side quests and NPCs that aren’t just pop culture references really give it some heart and soul. Some clichés, but little to no action/horror movie logic where characters act like idiots for no reason.

It’s got a lot of legs if you like the combat and enjoy collecting new cosmetics and gear. Personally I love games like this when I’m listening to podcasts or audiobooks.

It’s not without its issues. It plays on Steam Deck, but is pretty choppy ant times and I sometimes get frame rate drops on PC, but my rig is starting to show its age. I’ve heard the PS5 version has more performance issues, but I play on PC so I can’t confirm. The occasional bug crops up, but I haven’t run across anything game breaking. At worst I’ve had to come back to a quest later, but usually a reload fixes things.

Anyways that’s a big rambly pitch for my surprise favorite game this year. I haven’t given much thought to TGA yet, but I am super excited for Monster Hunter Wilds next year.