While I very much appreciate the efforts of indie developers who try out new combinations of elements to see what works, there’s no question that the results can vary pretty wildly. There’s no doubt that some amazing fruits have been borne from the labor of creators willing to take some risks, but it isn’t unusual to also discover combinations that don’t mix particularly well for a variety of reasons. W.A.N.D Project feels like a title that gets stuck somewhere in the middle, offering up decent play, but never quite feeling like it comes together in a convincing fashion.

In terms of what works well, you can really see the ambition in the design of your character’s board, which essentially defines their abilities in each run. Using some simple components you’ll be able to pair a core trigger type, an ability, and then a variety of modifiers to add potency or other effects. These establish what skills you’ll be using for both offensive and defensive purposes when you hit the arena. Each skirmish generally only lasts a minute or less the majority of the time, where you’ll need to use the skills you’ve chosen to your advantage, though they’re typically slower to fire off than you may be used to for games of this type.

The shame here is that I think at its core there are some good ideas here, but in practice I’m also dubious about whether or not they improve the play experience. Yes, there are a number of skills, methods for how they’ll be kicked off (whether by staying still, movement, on a cooldown, and more), and attributes you can load up to decent effect, but I’m not sure when you’re running around they really feel very transformative. Especially once you take into account the time you’ll need to spend on choosing and configuring your chosen skills on the board, the typically short runs you’re on using those skills feel like a bit of a letdown. Perhaps some streamlining of the selection process and methods, allowing you to get back to the action and seeing results more quickly, or making the action itself a bit more varied and exciting would have helped.

In the end, there does seem to be a seed of a good idea here, it just feels like it needs further work. If nothing else, the time you’ll need to spend on the strategic element of managing your board doesn’t feel like it offers enough of a clear payoff. Yes, you’ll get distinct runs with different builds out of it, but you could say that of just about any roguelike where skills and weapons are combined in different ways. Without a more clear “wow factor” coming from your time invested that aspect falls a bit flat. Throw in the action not quite packing the thrilling punch that many of its competitors offer, and this is an interesting experiment, but not an entirely successful one.