Wizadry is considered one of the founding fathers of modern PC role-playing games and significantly shaped the RPG genre, especially in the 80s and early 90s. With “Variants Daphne,” a new installment has now been released on Steam, but there is a catch.
What kind of game is this? “Wizadry Variants Daphne” is a 3D dungeon crawler that was originally released for iOS and Android in October 2024. The PC port followed on March 6, 2025, on Steam, in version 1.4.10.
The free role-playing game aims to continue the legacy of the venerable Wizadry series and thus sends you and your party into the labyrinth of despair, where a challenging difficulty level, deadly traps, and dangerous enemies await you. In addition to treasure chests, you will also find the bones of lost adventurers in the dungeons, which can be resurrected at various rarity levels.
Besides Wizadry, Ultima is also one of the key founding fathers of PC role-playing games. Both series had or still have an MMORPG. Here you can see the trailer for the legacy servers of Ultima Online:
At least no NFTs …
How is “Wizadry Variants Daphne” received? In the Google Play Store, the ratings actually look solid: After 48,400 reviews, the average rating currently stands at 4.4 out of 5 stars. The RPG started less positively on Steam. There, after 531 reviews, it only achieved a “Mixed” rating, with 54 percent positive reviews.
Some criticism is aimed at the game’s monetization. The current rights holder of Wizadry – the Japanese company Drecom – is forgoing NFTs this time (which were still used in Eternal Crypt: Wizardry BC (via wiz-eternalcrypt.com)), but instead, a gacha system is implemented.
Marston (Sölf) writes in his review on Steam: “This is a gacha. The monetization is horrendous. Everything is expensive. And if you want to give the developers a little money, some of the best options start at €23+.” Kaizer adds in his review on Steam: “Aggressive monetization, this is not free-to-play friendly.”
What else is criticized? Many fans of the mobile version of the game criticize the technically mixed PC port.
- Samaron warns about the anti-cheat of the PC version (via Steam): “A warning: It uses a kernel anti-cheat, which is a rootkit. Basically, it remains active even if the game is not running or has been uninstalled. It can compromise your files and settings.”
- Nickname863 criticizes on Steam: “Unfortunately, this PC version is not great in its current state. Strong issues with aliasing, the download location is not configurable, the game runs in portrait mode […]. I feel like the basic design of the game does not fit well with a normally sized monitor.”
- Yuri of Astora lists further issues on Steam: “There are no advanced graphics settings […]. Outside the dungeons, the graphics look quite poor. […] There is no button to exit the game. The only way is literally Alt-F4. […] Please let us select audio and language separately. I would like to play with Japanese audio.”
Is there anything praised?
- 사랑해 claims to have played the mobile version of the game for more than 1,000+ hours and writes on Steam: “I personally really enjoy the game, it meets all my demands, and with the new Abyss 3 we recently got, it has become really tough, but the game atmosphere is something you won’t find anywhere else.”
- Snowflame also recommends the game on Steam: “Overall, it’s a fun game and I’ll probably dive back in as soon as I feel my companions are strong enough.”
- The already quoted Marston (Sölf) draws a positive conclusion on Steam despite the monetization: “If you’re looking for a dark fantasy dungeon crawler that has a high difficulty level and may make you curse more often than you’d like to admit, then look no further and download the game! After all, it’s free.”
What do I need to know about the Wizadry series? The popular role-playing series began with Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord in 1981 and was originally developed by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead for the Apple II. Various ports, sequels, remakes, and spin-offs followed later.
Notably: The two direct sequels Wizardry 2: The Knight of Diamonds and Wizardry 3: Legacy of Llylgamyn could only be played if you owned and completed Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. The last part of the main series is called Wizardry 8: Destination Dominus and was released in 2001 for Steam (89 percent positive).
Wizadry has always relied on a colored graphic representation of the dungeons and labyrinths (which was groundbreaking in 1981), a well-thought-out race and class system, party battles, a first-person perspective, and a challenging level of difficulty.
About twelve years after the last installment of the main series, Wizadry Online was released, a free-to-play MMORPG for PC. Developer Gamepot and publisher Sony Online Entertainment released the game in the West on January 30, 2013. Only a year later, on July 31, 2014, the service was shut down again. You can find out more about the early closure here: These 7 MMORPGs were the fastest to die
