Wanderburg: What If Howl's Moving Castle Was a Roguelike?
There’s a moment in every Vampire Survivors run where your little character becomes essentially a mobile weapons platform—lasers firing in every direction, garlic auras pulsing, you’re barely steering at that point. Just a vehicle for destruction.
Randwerk, a three-person studio out of Germany, looked at that and said: “What if we cut out the middleman?”
You Are the Castle Now
Wanderburg puts you in control of a castle. On wheels. Rolling across a medieval landscape where fortresses hunt, villages flee, and only the biggest stronghold survives. It’s like someone took the Mortal Engines concept, shrunk it down to a roguelike, and gave it that satisfying Vampire Survivors progression loop.
The hook is simple: your castle rolls forward, enemies come at you, and you build your mobile fortress into an increasingly ridiculous death machine. Flamethrowers. Cannons. Wizard towers. Explosive mines. Every upgrade bolts onto your rolling structure, creating this evolving war machine that’s uniquely yours.
GamesRadar called it “the fastest I’ve gotten sucked into a roguelike all year.” And honestly? I get it. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching your little fortress grow from a glorified cart into a bristling citadel while scooping up sheep and doing donuts to line up your cannon volleys.
The Howl’s Moving Castle Energy
PC Gamer made the comparison that’s now stuck in everyone’s head: “Howl’s Moving Castle if it were a roguelike.” And that energy is real. Your castle is this living, growing thing—mismatched towers, smoking chimneys, weapons jutting out at odd angles. It’s got personality in a way that static roguelike characters rarely achieve.
The Steam Next Fest demo just wrapped (RIP, it ended March 2), but the game’s already sitting at 66,000+ wishlists. For a three-person studio’s first major reveal, that’s the kind of reception that suggests Randwerk is onto something.
Why This Works
The genius here is taking two proven formulas—survivors-style roguelikes and the vehicle-building loop from games like Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime or Dome Keeper—and mashing them together with a premise that immediately clicks. You don’t need a tutorial to understand “you are castle, castle kills things, castle gets bigger.”
It’s also the kind of game that scales well. The demo showed off Survivors-style upgrades (pick one of three options, watch numbers go up), but the castle-building element opens doors for deeper customization. Module placement matters. Defensive positioning matters. It’s got room to grow beyond “more damage = more good.”
Looking Forward
Wanderburg is targeting 2026 for release, which means we’re probably looking at a late-year launch if the three-person team takes their time polishing. Given the demo reception, they’d be smart to—first impressions matter, and right now everyone’s first impression is “holy shit, I’m a castle.”
If you missed the demo, throw it on your wishlist. This is exactly the kind of weird, premise-driven indie that makes the Steam ecosystem worth paying attention to.
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What’s your favorite “you are the thing” game? Drop me a line on Bluesky.