Story

The story is simple, the protagonist Wolfgang used to be a minion of the Dark Lord, but then the RTP heroes stormed the Dark Lord's tower, vanquished the Dark Lord and ruined Wolfgang's birthday party. After this happens, Wolfgang swears to avenge the Dark Lord (I guess he was nice to his minions?) and take revenge on the RTP heroes that ruined his life. The goal of the game is to raise an army powerful enough to allow Wolfgang to strike at their base of Goodhero City and defeat their leader Ralph of VX fame.

The story doesn't take itself super seriously and the dialogue avoids being cheesy. The only real complaint would be about the pretty abrupt ending, but that's to be expected.


Gameplay

The gameplay of Wolf's Gang is not really different from a typical RPG, you wander around various maps, looking for monsters to recruit to your army. Most simply raise your Army Strength stats, some are actual party members you may recruit. You also collect resources from boxes to upgrade your base. There are no traditional random encounters, instead, each map includes visible enemies (with graphics that might make you think that they are simply NPCs) that chase you if you get too close and trigger a battle if you touch them.

The game uses the Time Progress system, meaning that both your characters and enemies may take actions once their action bar fills up. The game also uses the Active variant of said system, so while you are busy choosing which skills to use, the enemy's bar keeps charging and they may attack no matter what. The skills of both the enemies and your own party members mostly deal damage, with a few simple status effects and buffs/debuffs available from a few of the available companions.

Each map also has atleast one simple boss fight, which are mostly more difficult versions of regular battles. These boss fights might involve some RTP hero or merely be some strong Guard enemy.


Graphics and Music

Wolf's Gang uses custom art for everything except battle animations. Its bright, colorful style perfectly matches the tone of the game and provides plenty of detail. In particular, I have to praise the level of care that went into recreating each used RTP character in the game's artstyle (though Ralph's hair color seems somewhat off).

The maps each feel very distinct from each other and overall, there are really only three minor complaints I have about the graphical side of things. One, if you play the game with a mouse, the default flashing square effect is really annoying and with so much custom art, it would be better if it were replaced. Two, the maps are sometimes so busy with background detail it's a bit harder to determine where you need to go than it probably should. The Farm and Encampment maps are the worst in that regard. Three, since the battle use the default front-view battle system, the animations of enemy attacks and skills aren't shown, only the sound effects are heard.

Music and sound effects seem to be just the default MZ RTP and while the sprites and tileset parts of the MZ RTP drew some criticism, the music part of the RTP is definitely top notch.


Conclusion

The biggest weaknesses of Wolf's Gang is its existence more of a proof-of-concept than an actual game. Sure, you can upgrade your base by building new rooms. Sure, you can increase your army's strength by cooking them meals with the Kitchen. You can use Bath Salts to give your party stat buffs if you have the Baths room. Sure, you can build a Smithy to add an equipment merchant to your base. The problem is, there's nothing in the game that would necessitate such things. The game if very short, easy and if you go through the locations in the probably intended order, by the time you gain the material to build/upgrade the more interesting rooms, the game is basically over.

As for rooms that allow you to increase army strength... the only effect Army Strength seems to have is in a certain part of the game at the very end. After storming the gates of Goodhero city, there's a battle between the humans and the monsters at the town square. Your party needs to navigate through the battle to the entrance to the tower where Ralph resides, while your Army Defense dwindles with each second (though it doesn't seem to happen while you are fighting), with a Game Over once it reaches 0. However, this stop once you actually enter the tower and the timer is so generous even without upgrades that you would have to leave the game running for a few minutes to lose.

The first time, I completed the game while entirely ignoring the base building aspects, save for building two more bedrooms in order to gain the max party capacity.

The game is nice, just wish there was more :)