Wildfrost Review: Charming to Look At, Frustrating to Play

On first impression, Wildfrost seems like a slam dunk. With a gorgeous hand-drawn aesthetic, a wintry roguelike setup, and a deck-building twist that leans into strategy, it gives the impression of a new genre darling. Unfortunately, beneath the polished exterior is a game that frustrates more than it satisfies. Wildfrost may charm with its visuals, but the experience often feels like a punishing exercise in random chance rather than a rewarding test of strategy.

You begin with a lone “leader” and a handful of basic units as you navigate a grid-based battlefield through an escalating series of battles. The twist is the cooldown mechanic: cards don’t activate right away but tick down over turns before their effect takes place. It’s meant to add depth, but more often than not it becomes a burden. What seems like a unique strategic feature quickly devolves into a fiddly mechanic that delays gratification and makes it hard to build momentum in battle.

The core problem with Wildfrost is balance. Every run is wildly inconsistent. One round you might pull relics and units that synergize beautifully, letting you coast through fights. The next, you’re given a mess of incompatible tools that make it nearly impossible to survive the second boss. There is a difference between difficult and unfair, and Wildfrost often crosses the line into the latter. Too many encounters feel stacked against you from the outset, not because of your mistakes, but because of poor draw luck or unbalanced enemy combinations.

This would be less frustrating if the game gave you more tools to control your fate. But upgrades are gated behind persistent progression that drips out at a glacial pace. You need to grind through losses just to unlock basics like the ability to carry more cards or see better relics. Instead of encouraging experimentation, the game seems to punish it, pushing players to retry similar strategies until one finally gets lucky.

Controls and UI also leave something to be desired, particularly when playing on console. What should be an intuitive card-battler is made sluggish by clunky input prompts, and navigating between card details and enemy information can feel cumbersome. The charming art direction and animations don’t help much when the interface doesn’t respond fluidly.

Even the much-touted town-building metagame, which allows you to upgrade your hub between runs, fails to add meaningful variety. It’s a slow burn with minimal impact on the actual moment-to-moment gameplay. You unlock new leaders and cards, sure, but they are still beholden to the whims of the game’s randomness. This might be fine if the combat was consistently engaging, but the rigid structure and punishing difficulty make each run feel more like a chore than a chance at discovery.

There’s also a tonal disconnect. Wildfrost wants to be this cozy, feel-good experience. Its art style is bright and cheery. Its soundtrack is lighthearted and whimsical. But the actual game it wraps around is brutal, often joyless, and entirely unforgiving. The contrast between form and function becomes grating, and it’s easy to feel misled by the inviting surface.

To be fair, there are moments when Wildfrost clicks. A lucky combo might wipe out an enemy line in satisfying fashion, or a newly unlocked character might surprise you with an unexpectedly useful skill. But these highs are too rare and too random to outweigh the overall grind and aggravation.

In a genre crowded with excellent examples of smart, engaging roguelike deck-builders (Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and Inscryption to name a few), Wildfrost fails to earn its place. It’s a beautiful but hollow experience, buried under layers of frustration, randomness, and wasted potential.

Unless you’re a diehard for punishing roguelikes with a penchant for icy visuals, Wildfrost is easy to skip.

RATING: 2. 0 out of 5 stars.

Wildforest is available for PC, Switch and Xbox Series S/X.