Warden’s Will Review — A Good Time, Not a Long Time

Warden’s Will is a third-person shooter action roguelike with multiplayer and bullet-hell elements. While certainly engaging and full of fun ideas, the game can quickly become predictable and repetitive, lacking significant replayability. However, with its modest price point, it’s worth checking out if you’re interested, though you may only get a few hours of playtime for your investment.

Warden’s Will is most comparable to Risk of Rain, an incredibly popular roguelike shooter series developed by a small team and published by Gearbox. In both games, you are given a cast of playable characters and a series of alien planets to explore, fighting your way through each one using roguelike buffs and sci-fi weaponry to explosive effect.

A game of Warden’s Will follows the same formula each time. Alone or with a team of friends, you load into a planet full of hostile, haywire robots and are tasked with locating three transmitters. Each transmitter must be loaded with bits gained from killing said haywire robots, requiring you to play a game of king-of-the-hill as you defend a location and collect the necessary currency. After all three transmitters are fully loaded, you must escape the level via a rift in space-time that takes you to a boss fight. Winning this boss fight allows you to continue to the next planet and repeat the process.

This process is simultaneously made easier and more difficult by taking the time to explore the planet around you. Gathering currency from defeating robots and engaging with optional side objectives (namely, mini-hordes of enemies you can spawn in at certain locations) allows you to purchase upgrades during your run. These upgrades are presented as a randomly selected group of options, as is typical of the roguelike genre. Engaging with these side objectives also gives you the chance to unlock a permanent currency for acquiring new characters and weapons.

One thing Warden’s Will does differently—and certainly better than Risk of Rain—is separating its guns from its characters (or “Wardens,” as they’re called). This allows you to mix and match your favorite available shooter mechanics with your preferred playable Warden, adding extra variety between runs, especially when playing with a full team of Wardens.

Each of the titular Wardens comes with combat abilities, one of which is on a shorter cooldown than the other “ultimate” ability and one ability dedicated to movement. Movement in the game, by the way, is phenomenal, allowing for complete omnidirectional travel and flight, with one Warden in particular having an incredibly satisfying flight ability. The movement abilities of the other Wardens, unfortunately, aren’t quite as fun to use, but that could honestly be subject to personal preference.

One standout mechanic in Warden’s Will I find incredibly cool is its unique approach to weapon reloading. Instead of traditional magazines and clips, weapons use a heat system, where each shot generates heat until the weapon eventually overheats and requires a cooldown period. Normally, this mechanic would require pacing your shots, which effectively mimics a reload cooldown. However, Warden’s Will gives all of its weapons a secondary fire option—a special ability for each gun that is often stronger than the main projectile and uses heat as its ammo source. This allows you to fire your weapons indefinitely if you carefully trade heat between your primary and secondary fire to avoid overheating.

One major issue with the guns, however, is that they simply don’t do a lot of damage. Even from the beginning, the game’s enemies can feel like bullet sponges. With foes growing stronger over time and no significant increase to your gun damage, the mid-to-late stages of a level can feel like a chore to power through.

So far, I’ve described a pretty fun game, and I will say that I had a blast with Warden’s Will for the first three hours or so. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the game lacks depth, which raises questions about its long-term appeal.

Warden’s Will has eight guns and four classes to unlock, all unique and all unlockable at various prices of earnable currency. Generally, if you engage with optional content during your runs, you can unlock any one thing you want within one or two runs—fewer if you survive for multiple levels. However, each Warden only having two abilities makes the small cast of four feel limiting, as you’ll quickly master each character within your first run with them.

This lack of content extends to your runs as well. You’ll find there aren’t many powerups to collect and even fewer that have a meaningful or interesting impact on your build. In some runs, I had just as much luck avoiding powerups altogether and relying on my character’s innate abilities and weapons.

The core objective of each run can also become repetitive, partly because the levels are statically designed and always appear in the same sequence. It didn’t take long for me to grow tired of powering up radar dishes. I found clearing as many optional mini-horde portals as possible to be more enjoyable. The maps have a lot of verticality, which is nice, but this can make finding objectives a chore since many are tucked away in spots you wouldn’t naturally think to look.

Compared to Risk of Rain, Warden’s Will doesn’t hold up. While it has a few great ideas and is undoubtedly fun to play, it quickly grows repetitive due to an underlying lack of depth and variety. That said, it’s enjoyable at first, and I predict most players will get around four to six hours of fun before burnout sets in.

If the game interests you, I’d suggest checking it out. For the price of a lunch at McDonald’s, you can support clearly passionate developers and have a fun time, even if it’s not for very long.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Warden’s Will is available on Steam.