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0 Gamers are being spoilt in 2025. We’re not even halfway through the year yet, and we have at least 3 credible shouts for GOTY. In between trying out these bigger budget titles, though, I want to make a more concerted effort to try games from smaller, up-and-coming developers. One such game that came across my metaphorical desk at Thumb Culture is Wings of Endless. A sophomore offering from Uruguayan team, Isoca Games, who have once again joined forces with JanduSoft to bring their game to market.
While their first game was a top-down roguelike, Wings of Endless is a 2D platforming RPG in which you can freely switch between 3 main characters at any time. The premise was interesting enough to gain my attention, and so let’s have a deeper look.
The Best Bounty Hunter, or Just Winging It?
In the opening moments of the game, we meet our first hero, Hariku, an orphaned ‘bounty hunter’ on a mysterious delivery mission. He’s been sent to a dungeon to collect a package and subsequently courier it to the Tower of Mages. We soon discover that the cargo is an owl with the ability to speak and a split-personality. The owl imparts a double jump and dash ability to Hariku and the journey towards the tower begins. Along the way, Hariku will eventually meet a cast of recurring characters, including 2 other party members. Diana, a mercenary of sorts with a secret connection to another group, and Makoto, a trainee mage.
Together, the 3 heroes will uncover a plot to revive a centuries old war, among other secrets and twists. But how does the game play?
Gameplay
While there are multiple player characters, for the first quarter or so of the game, Hariku will be your only character. Don’t worry, he’s the best bounty hunter and is therefore a dab hand in combat. Haiku wields a large hammer as a weapon, and can use a dodge-roll to get out of trouble in fights. Combos of hits can be strung together, so long as Hariku has remaining stamina, after which some recovery time will be needed before swinging again. In mid-air, performing hammer attacks also grants inertia, which is really helpful for wailing on flying enemies, or enemies on the ceiling.
When you do eventually pick up the additional party members, they come with their own combat abilities. Diana has throwing knives and bombs, and can become unseen to enemies for a short period of time. Makoto has both ice and fire elemental attacks, which can freeze or burn enemies, respectively. He can also freeze himself to become impervious to attacks, again for a short window.
Being able to quickly shift between characters to utilise their different ability in combat could be useful, but I found the benefits to be limited. Switching to another character allows for the other 2 to recover their HP slowly overtime, if they weren’t KO’d. This was a helpful effect because even though there are healing items in Wings of Endless, using any potion or item incurs a cooldown for all items. The cooldown became a cause for some of the frustrations I felt with the game. I found that Diana’s ranged attacks helped at times, dealing damage at a distance, but overall Hariku was who I defaulted to.
Wings Are Useful
Defaulting to Hariku was a behaviour I developed due to the platforming in Wings of Endless. His dash and double jump abilities are a requirement for getting around the map, Diana and Makoto don’t have anywhere near as much mobility. Those two can eventually learn skills that will help get you to a couple out of reach areas. Until then, they won’t be able to make many jumps successfully. Unfortunately, this is only one of the issues faced when navigating the world. Jumping into the many low ceilings and strangely placed outcroppings will often cause you to plummet into hazards, such as spikes and poison liquid. It’s precision platforming lacking precision controls.
Furthermore, falling into poison becomes overly punishing. On contact with poison, you take huge damage, and become poisoned. Until you use an antidote, poison damage ticks regularly, at high numbers, until you’re at 1 HP. On its own, this combo of consequences is not unheard of in games, and is not entirely unfair. The biggest issue comes when your characters have trouble breaking water tension to jump out of the poison. Thus, this lands you in an overly punishing cycle of trying to cure the poison, heal and escape. Remember, using one item incurs a cooldown for all items, and if you use an antidote but can’t jump out of the hazard, you’re getting poisoned again anyway. This is only exacerbated when you encounter lava, with causes instant death if you’ve not found an item to mitigate the danger.
Combat Imbalance
Platforming was only one of the sources of discouragement I felt from Wings of Endless, the combat is also strangely balanced. There are several times when enemies will be able to deal massive damage and inflict status changes upon you. A couple such examples are flame throwing hogs and poison plants. The former was not too terrible to deal with because their attack cadence was easier to deal with (until there were three of them at once). The latter, however, were a real curse. They blend in really well with the surroundings, fire projectiles that are hard to dodge due to the platforming, and cause poison, which we’ve already discussed the downsides of.
Bosses are really the main reason I’m bringing up this imbalance, and the reason I rage-quit the game in the swamp. Bosses generally have really high health pools, and hit hard. Early in game, the bosses can be dealt with by being careful and choosing your moments to attack. I even cheesed a really difficult boss in the Thorny Hills with heavy item use.
Boss battles later in the game become overly punishing and drawn out. If they hit me, they either one-shot my characters, or take two-thirds of their health, and usually inflict a status aliment. Meanwhile, I can deal a couple of hundred damage per hit if I’m lucky, and even with items that improve poison attack and double the chance of inflicting it, I can maybe poison an enemy once every couple hundred attempts. The swamp boss had 130,000 HP. That’s about 520 hammer strikes. At that point, it’s a battle that takes over 5 minutes to beat, and taking damage almost certainly means defeat. It’s tedious.
The World of Plusaken
What I loved about Wings of Endless, and its biggest saving grace, is the world. Each area has its own biome, from the aptly thorn-covered Thorny Hills, to the snowy tundras of the Frostlands. The variation in the locations, and the enemies within, kept everything feeling fresh. Each of the areas never feel too big or too small, granting enough exploration opportunities to keep you occupied but never feeling lost. There are also plenty of secrets to find, mostly consisting of fake walls. The two special collectibles you’ll be on the lookout for during your travels are Golden Feathers and Owlguises. The former act as single-use assignable stat boosts for the characters, and the latter are three-piece costumes you can use to dress-up your owl companion.
Annoying as combat can be, the enemy variation is great. The bestiary indicates there are 50 enemies in the game, and having seen most of the world during the time I played, I’ve not encountered any simple reskinned designs.
Questing
As you reach some towns, you’ll find notice boards that occasionally get updated with requests from various town-folk. These vary from defeating a certain amount of enemies, to collecting items, or even recruiting people for new jobs. These quests give you good reason to revisit earlier areas and maybe stumble across items you may have missed. They’re not massively deep or sophisticated, but they add some nice distractions from the main story if you’re just wanting to explore more, level-up, or simply potter about.
Graphics & Audio
As mentioned earlier, the many environments in Wings of Endless are one of it’s best features. The 2D pixel are is vibrant and charming. The vibe is probably best described as a modern-day equivalent to 16-bit era side-scrollers. The only complaint I can levy against the visuals is that the poison planet enemies and flamethrower traps are camouflaged slightly too well.
For the most part, the audio is a delightful accompaniment to the gameplay. One exception is the low health alarm, which is highly obnoxious when compared to all other sounds effects and music. I enjoyed the backing music, which is suitable in tone for an adventure RPG. For example, the in-game music is jovial and relaxing, whereas boss battles are accompanied by a more urgent piece that drives up the tension. Overall, I was really pleased with the visual and audio presentation in Wings of Endless.
Longevity
At 13 hours, the completion tracker on PS5 tells me I’m about 80% through the main story. I’d guess there’s about 5 hours left to finish everything up. That is entirely dependent on how much more difficult the bosses become past the swamp, though. I feel like I could throw myself at that boss for dozens of hours and make no progress. Once you’ve completed the story, there are a couple of trophies that can be cleaned up, but I don’t think there’s much else in the game to keep you coming back beyond that.
Final Thoughts
If the developers were to address my concerns above, Wings of Endless would receive a strong recommendation from me, assuming it’s price point will be similar to Isoca Games’ previous game. As it stands, the great art, varied world-design, and decent story are not quite enough to outweigh my frustrations.
Given that, Wings of Endless receives a Thumb Culture Silver Award and a warning that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
If you enjoy side-scrolling, pixel platformers, why not check out my review of Alwa’s Legacy?
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