
Survival looks ugly, but the ugly survive. Wastelanders is a dystopian turn-based card battler where desperation corrupts souls deeper than the alien Waste. Build your deck to defend Humanity's last haven, but avert their eyes. Lest they see that the Waste has already taken your beauty.
Revenue comes from in-game items and microtransactions, which our price-based model doesn't estimate. Copies below reflect the player base, not paid sales.
Media

About
Uncover the Wasteland’s secrets… and find your mom?
A catastrophic meteor strike brings civilization to the brink, covering the planet’s surface in an alien substance known as the Waste. The city of New Haven, the sole beacon of humanity, stands alone amidst a desolate Wasteland, held afloat by harnessing the Waste’s extraterrestrial power and defended by an intrepid force of explorers and researchers – the NITES. But all’s not well in the desert, and in the wake of her mother’s disappearance, Jackie, an aspiring NITES soldier, is determined to follow in her footsteps and uncover what’s really out there in the Wasteland.
Key Features
Dual-Deck Synergy: Each weapon deck boasts a unique theme with a powerful identity-defining buff, like the Staff's Flow and the Pistol's Accuracy. Draft skill cards from two weapon decks at once to assemble the combat deck, harnessing their unique buffs to discover devastating synergies within the web of carefully designed tactical possibilities. Selecting the right cards allows you to chain together devastating combos, dish out damage, and prevent your enemies from retaliating during a Clash.
Unique Turn-Based Clashes: Meet your opponent’s attacks head-on by countering their moves with your own! Gone are the days of standing idly by as you politely wait for the opponent's attacks before you make your own. Opponents go head-to-head on the battlefield with their attacks, forming Clashes where only the strongest move connects! Consider the order of your actions carefully to sequence buffs, blocks, and combos to ensure enemy attacks never stand a chance at landing. Offense is the best defense! Learn to exploit Clashes and the Waste creatures will never stand a chance against you.
Fully hand-drawn pixel art: Wastelanders showcases a modern twist on the classic 8-bit pixel art.
Immersive narrative: Experience the story of Jacqueline "Jackie" Page and leave your mark in the pages of New Haven. Adventure into the Wasteland, defeat Waste creatures under overwhelming odds, and find the traces left behind by Jackie's Mom. The Wasteland hides its secrets deep in its alien landscape, but the NITES hide something even more horrifying within the walls of New Haven. Perhaps the two are more entwined than they let on.
Genres
Stats
Languages: English
Engagement
Reviews
Overall the game is pretty good with nice pixel art, good enemy design and a unique combat design. However, I do have some qualms with said combat. My biggest issue is with the action economy. The game currently has a system where skills cannot take up the same speed value and this system works great when you are only controlling one character but starts to get annoying fast when you are controlling multiple. There are many instances where I've been completely locked out of acting with one character because the other one already took up all the speed values. This felt even worse when I realized that the enemies are not restricted like this. In the boss encounter, the boss likes to summon these beetles which can spam a singular move with 4 speed. This means that if you want to redirect the skill, you can only do it once since there can only be one skill with 5 speed. Trying to clash with 6 skills at 4 speed when you only can only redirect with one skill feels awful and unfair to play against. Additionally, I think the dialogue feels very unnatural. The characters feel one dimensional and say things that no one would really say like "Oh I should switch my deck around" or something to that extent. Also, The story is hard to follow since you are just dropped into this world and they constantly throw phrases at you like "NITES" which I still have no idea what "NITES" is supposed to refer to (Although I didn't read the story very carefully after how unnatural the beginning dialogue felt.) The game could also use some major quality of life improvements. I'll just list all the ones that I feel would be solutions to things that annoyed me in the game - A toggle that shows all enemy intents or active clashes. It was really annoying having to check every skill to see who it was targetting and whether or not it was clashing or not. - Being able to directly click on an enemy skill to clash instead of having to click on the main body. It's annoying having to hover over skills to see what they have to do and then to click on the main body instead of the skill to clash. - Clash highlight feature on the clashbar. If I wanted to undo a clash, I'd have to find the clash in the clashbar which got annoying to look through when there were many clashes at once. A feature that highlighted the clash you were hovering over on the clashbar would be very nice -Keyboard shortcuts. Always nice. - Buffer dice rolls. Sometimes the clash wouldn't occur because I clicked too early. In essence, the only real complaint I have with the game is the action economy. Not all games need excellent dialogue to be enjoyable and the QOL issues are pretty minor. I think this game has serious potential and I am looking forward to season 1.
Related
Related
Trends
Concurrent players on Steam, sampled daily since tracking started.
Hours played at review time, across 36 reviews with recorded playtime.
win
I enjoyed this game. The gameplay - the battle rules - feels very unique. I'm looking forward to more chapters!
Pretty peak Library of ruina esque gameplay, excited to see more.
Постапокалиптическая RPG с элементами выживания: игрок исследует опустошённые земли, взаимодействует с фракциями, собирает ресурсы и принимает решения с долгосрочными последствиями. Акцент на нелинейности, развитии поселения и моральных дилеммах. Плюсы: Глубокая система выживания — нужно следить за ресурсами, погодой, болезнями; возможность строить и улучшать убежище добавляет стратегический слой геймплея; Нелинейное повествование — выборы влияют на отношения с фракциями и судьбу поселения, позволяя пройти игру разными путями (дипломатия, торговля или сила); Проработанный мир — локации полны деталей, скрытых мест и историй, что поощряет исследование и создаёт ощущение живого постапокалипсиса. Минусы: Медленное начало — первые часы посвящены сбору базовых ресурсов и освоению механик, из‑за чего динамика может показаться низкой; Сложное управление инвентарём — система организации вещей перегружена деталями, что затрудняет быстрый доступ к нужным предметам в критических ситуациях; Баги и нестабильность — периодические вылеты и ошибки в квестовых цепочках прерывают погружение и требуют перезагрузок. Итог: подойдёт поклонникам постапокалиптических RPG и выживания — впечатляет глубиной симуляции, свободой выбора и атмосферным миром. Может разочаровать из‑за неторопливого старта, неудобного инвентаря и технических недочётов.
I played for a little over an hour and I really enjoyed my time with it. The artstyle was rather charming even if it's not as polished as it's inspiration or visual novels but because it's style isn't purely a visual novel it's able to pull of some fun visual tricks that those games either wouldn't or couldn't do. I do wish it were more consistent though. I'm not one to care about character designs staying on model but I think if you're gonna do that you have to emphasize the mood that's attempting to be conveyed. A comforting hug emphasizing a character's softness, the sprites emphasizing their prowess, their dialogue emphasizing their mood or something. I don't mind it but I could see other people knocking the game for it. The story was fun. It does the thing that a few RPGs do where they don't hit you with their encyclopedia to the world and instead kinda starts in media res. It's not quite as well done as it could be but it does it well enough to get you to understand what's happening, what are the protagonists goals, and what are the stakes. I won't pretend to be an expert but I felt the game trying to make up for not introducing the player to the world by introducing us to the characters rather slowly. The gameplay I feel needs the most polish. As it is it's fun but it could always be more fun. For example, this prologue(?) doesn't give the players SP so it's clearly inspired more by Ruina than Limbus, but both have ways to weigh the odds in the players favor. This has none so it's a pure coin flip which can be... infuriating. The music is a standout honestly. It's not what I would expect so I walked away pretty impressed. All in all a more than solid first attempt at a shot at Project Moon style combat. Well done all.
O sistema de escolha de números no combate é PÉSSIMO. Extremamente rápido, forçando quase sempre a acertar números baixos, bem ruim essa escolha, poderiam mudar isso se pretendem futuramente lançar o jogo, caso contrário muita gente não vai jogar. Outra parte chata, créditos impuláveis! E pior de tudo, diálogo chato, muita coisa pra ler, pulei foi tudo, fui direto pro combate e nem li nada. Deveriam encurtar isso.
Cool little indie game with clearly a lot of thought and creativity put into it. All the decks and statuses interact meaningfully with each other, so the game has surprisingly deep mechanics even though all the underlying systems are quite simple. The art and music are quite nice as well! Looking forward to season 1!
I really enjoyed the card game once I'd gotten used to it and understood the mechanics a bit better. Combat was fun and interesting with a decent challenge level. The game was a little rough around the edges and lacked some important QOL features, but it seems to still be very early in development, so I assume that will get better as it ages.
nice game
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.