W.A.N.D. Project Review

Ever since Vampire Survivors released, there has been a huge influx of roguelike shoot ‘em up titles available on the market. Some feel like exact clones of that original title, while others try to do something different to make their experience unique. One unique aspect of W.A.N.D. Project is that you will be crafting your spells to give them a variety of traits. These traits can drastically affect the amount of damage you inflict on the enemy and the difficulty of surviving the incoming enemy waves.

When you begin the game, you have a couple of options available to you, like starting a new run where you select your character or beginning a quick run where one is chosen for you. Start a new run, select a heroine; there will be three choices, but for now, we play as Yumi, the pink-haired, confident teenager whose family are defenders sworn to protect Tokyo from alien invasion. She must rescue her kidnapped sister and defeat the alien threat. Yumi is a versatile character who knows how to dodge, and she is slightly faster than the other girls. Being able to run fast is very important in W.A.N.D. Project; your goal is to stay away from the hordes of alien spiders, worms, and other creepy creatures for the required amount of time for that wave. At the start, you will use a wand named Ignacio. It is cast based on the starter you select in the build phase; it can fire when you are idle, dashing, or when it is cooling down from your previous attack. The wand summons fire spawners that can burn, weaken, and damage your foes. As you play, there are three other wands to unlock as you progress, each with its own stats and attacks.

Your mission starts at Shibuya Crossing, an eerily empty place that was once bustling with life. This is the first battleground where you will survive the waves of enemies and find what is lurking in the shadows, and this will be the stage you will stay at until you are able to survive through the 10 enemy waves. Once you successfully complete a run on the Shibuya level, there are two other stages that will unlock, along with different difficulties to customise the challenge level of your run.

Shibuya Crossing is where Yumi is from, at least until she was evacuated. Hiro, your cellphone and your wand, will communicate with you, promising to rebuild your home once you defeat the aliens. You need to survive until the timer runs out; you do this by avoiding the enemies with your dash and collecting all the essence (blue diamond shapes) that you find. The controls for the game are incredibly simple; all you do is move with the left thumbstick and dash with A (right face button). You aren’t in control of your wand; it fires automatically at the closest enemy, so the only thing you need to worry about is running away from the enemy.

The alien enemies that you’re fighting against/avoiding look like pixelated spiders and other creepy crawlies. They are black, and they only have a few pixels of red on them; I guess red represents that they are enemies that you should run from. There is no detail to these foes, which I guess makes sense since there are a large number of them, and when you are constantly running, you don’t really get to appreciate them anyway. I’m also pretty sure the Nintendo Switch would have issues dealing with that many detailed sprites on screen at the same time. You will have to survive for 10 waves before you move to the next level, so you will become very familiar with the Shibuya Crossing stage as you play it over and over again…

You learn that Essence is the source of your wand's power, so you will need to gather as much as possible. This acts as currency to purchase new Modules used in Spellcrafting. In between waves, you will work on creating your spells used to attack your enemies. You will use the Modules on the Board to craft your spells. There are three types of modules: Caster, which is the cooldown period before the spell is ready to be used again; Spawner, what kind of object your wand spawns; and Effects, which are added to the spawner to power it up like hitting harder causing more damage. Each module has an input and output arrow that connects them to the others on your board. They can be rotated to align the arrows with other pieces. Remember, Caster needs a Spawner to work, but spells can have multiple effects and spawners, so experiment! The amount of empty spots you have available to use on your personal spellboard will differ, depending on which of the characters you are playing as.

Once you know the basics about crafting spells, we learn about Retriggers. Only the first Spawner in your spell is guaranteed to fire; any others after that are less likely to. As you go through the modules on the board, the further down the chain, the chance of it firing decreases. To mitigate that, you can use Retriggers, this will improve your Spawners chances to fire. Besides crafting, you also have the option to Forge your modules. This allows you to merge two of the same pieces to create a new one in the next tier up, or you can recycle two different modules (that are the same tier) to gain a random one that is a tier higher.

While fighting the waves, you can replenish some health by picking up green essence which is dropped by bots with a green plus logo on them. I also recommend purchasing Modules that help restore health as the later waves get hectic, and it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid all of the enemies running toward you. There are obstacles placed on the stage that you can run into, like cars and trees; they can act as a temporary shield but if you stop moving, you become an easy target to hit. Each of the spells you use while out in the field has a Cast Cost that determines how often you can use the spell. The more modules you add to a spell, the longer it takes to cast. If you start a spell with a green cast when idle block, your wand won't fire until you totally stop moving, which isn't ideal when aliens are coming at you from every direction.

After losing your first run, you will unlock Maki, a new character to play as. You will also see how many special tasks, called Quests, that you can undertake during your run. Once completed, you will be rewarded with Meta Essence. Ride the Waves rewards you for completing six waves, Arachnophobia is completed when you kill 300 spiders, and Shoot ‘em Back when you kill a Shooting Alien 20 times. Having this extra Meta Essence will allow you to purchase better Modules making your attack stronger and my character a force to be reckoned with.

Maki may be my favourite character to play as; she loves playing videogames and she starts with two spells, plus she is wearing a hooded sweater! For her spells, you can enhance one or both, but her board will feel more full than Yumi’s as she only has one. You will also have the opportunity to upgrade your staff to make it stronger. The last character left to unlock is Rina. She has 280 HP which seems great, until you realise that she moves slower, so chances are you will take more damage while trying to escape from the enemies coming at you. So each of the teens has their own pros and cons to take into account.

The music that plays when you are crafting your spells is incredibly relaxing and chill, especially in contrast with how upbeat and energetic the battle music is. Though after multiple attempts to make progress, the music got a bit repetitive after hearing the same tune on repeat. Fortunately, the waves are quite short. Wave One requires you to survive for 30 seconds; as you progress, the amount of time you need to survive increases. Wave Three is 40 seconds while Wave Seven is up to 60 seconds. That may not seem like a huge amount of time, but when you are running for your life and are being swarmed, it feels like forever!

When you die, restart that run or go to the main menu to swap characters and change which of the wands that you are using. Finding the best combination for you will take some experimenting, especially since the spell that you craft will probably be different every time. I’ve been having a lot of fun with W.A.N.D. Project. It's fun to make your own spells; I honestly spent more time crafting and moving Modules around to find the best combos possible than actually trying to survive enemy waves. After a while, the game starts feeling a bit repetitive, especially since the stage is quite small, so there isn’t much to explore, but the spellcrafting is a lot of fun to do, which really helps break it up.