There's a Wendy's RPG? And It's Actually Good?

Hello everyone, and welcome to another game review. This time, we’re looking at… a Wendy’s game?

If you live in the United States or Canada, you’re almost assuredly familiar with Wendy’s. Those of you who live outside of those two countries however have quite a bit less luck in finding one. In the event that you don’t know what Wendy’s is, it’s an American fast food restaurant chain specializing in hamburgers, chicken, and ice cream. It is essentially McDonalds and Burger King, except about a thousand times better, and their ice cream machine actually works most of the time. If I’m on the look for fast food, Wendy’s is always one of my go-to options.

But Wendy’s isn’t only known for its fast food restaurants. It’s also known for its Twitter account, which is known for giving sarcastic tweets criticizing the dumb decisions of other brands, and even more dumb statements from regular idiot citizens. It’s kind of awesome. Their marketing department is also a little bit off the rails compared to their competitors. They recently released a new emo album called Listen to in the Wendy's Parking Lot, and that brings me now to this game you see before you.

WendyQuest: Legend of the Four Corner Stones, which was released on November 3 2026, and developed by 81monkeys, and commissioned by Wendy’s themselves. 81monkeys is a Canadian indie studio, and they actually haven’t released any games before this one, but are currently working on their first entirely original project, World of Anterra, after having been successfully Kickstarted (Kickstarter-ed?) back in 2022. This game actually makes quite a few references to that game, which the company still makes active development updates about. It’s apparently still supposed to come out this year.

But let’s get back to the point. There’s a Wendy’s RPG? And it’s actually good? I realize I’m spoiling the fact that this absurd fever dream of a game is actually worth playing, but then again, when have we ever not made the verdict clear from just the article titles? The game is literally free to get and play on Steam, iOS, and Android. Not only that, but if you live in the US, you can win real food at real Wendy’s restaurants for free! The free food promotion lasts until March 31 2027.

As you probably came to expect for a game based on a fast food restaurant, the story of this game is very simple and campy. The game takes place in a land called Savoria, which is based all around the food found at the restaurant, but one day, an evil clown-looking guy by the name of MechBorg comes in and wreck the place by serving low quality frozen fast food, and it’s up to you to put things back the way they were. Now that I’m reading this, I’m realizing that this is basically the plot of Connie and the Essence of Chaos again. Funny how fate works out.

In the game, you play as Wendy, who is a slightly exaggerated depiction of the eponymous red-haired girl who serves as the brand’s mascot. You are summoned when MechBorg brings his evil low-quality fast food creations to the scene, and a legend called for greatness. In typical turn-based RPG fashion, you have a number of allies at your disposal, and in this game, they’re all personifications of various Wendy’s food. It’s a bit absurd, but I admire the commitment to the bit. Unlike the typical RPG though, the only person actually involved in character maintenance is Wendy herself. The other characters are there, helping you deal damage to enemies, but only Wendy herself is ever directly attacked or needs to be taken care of through items. Your friends are basically invincible.

But it’s not just your friends that are based on fast food. So are the enemies. The game has a huge array of enemies like french fry snakes, flying chicken nuggets, and hot fudge elementals. Everything in this game looks a little bit cursed, but… in a good way? As you can probably guess, the developers had a lot of fun coming up with all of the food creations you fight along the way, and all of the Mech bosses, which are mechanized versions of McDonalds food items, and also a vocal pun (Mech -> Mc).

The actual combat in WendyQuest is both very simple, but also incredibly involved, and can be surprisingly dramatic. I mentioned before that Wendy is the only character you actually need to manage, and your friends are mostly just a means of getting a little bit of extra pinch damage and they each have two abilities - One for offense, and one for utility, which costs FP (or “Freshness Points"). You can swap which one is your active fighting partner at any time, although this doesn’t cost a turn or action as you might expect from a normal RPG, so it really is just as simple as picking the right character in a rock-paper-scissors type of fight.

The really involved part comes from the fact that Wendy’s combat herself is not just as simple as pressing the attack and watching her go. Instead, you initiate two meters that are quickly moving to their ends, and if you time your clicks just right, you can get a critical hit. I found this to be a good way to keep engagement on the player instead of mindlessly tapping the attack button, but you will need to learn this timing! Critical hits also have a chance to score the player with one Momentum, which can be spent on one of Wendy’s special attacks. Overall, the combat is enjoyable and has a higher ceiling of mastery than I would’ve expected a free fast food game to have.

Especially later in the game, the enemy groups can get a bit overwhelming. A side-effect of the fact that enemies only target Wendy is the fact that she will always be the one taking damage, and you’ll sometimes have a lot of status effects stacked on top of you at once since nearly every one has some type of status effect it can inflict on you. You’re probably going to have enough items to make this a non-issue, but expect the typical RPG “item drain” to persist throughout the whole game.

As you probably guessed, all of the items you find in the game are some type of food or drink item from Wendy’s? It is also really amusing to see “Wendy is Soggy” or “Wendy is Melty” appear on the screen when she is hit with a status effect. Your free place to heal and buy items? Just go to a Wendy’s.

Which gives me the opportunity to talk about something great about this game. The humor.

I mentioned before that the Wendy’s Twitter account is famous for taking shots at its competitors, and they’ve amped that up to eleven in this game. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this entire game is one giant roast of McDonalds. The whole permeating plot is essentially about getting rid of McDonalds and a demented version of Ronald McDonald, but the game is also constantly taking shots left and right at it through its dialogue, enemy designs, and the fact that Wendy can apparently melt ice just by touching it.

Beyond the shots at McDonalds, the game is also breaking the fourth wall, making fun of several JRPG tropes, and the occasional piece of absurdist humor that comes out of nowhere, but leaves me chortling anyway. I won’t say that every joke lands, but this game actually got me to laugh quite a few times.

Visually and auditorily, I believe the designers also had a lot of fun. The game has a perfect retro-pixel RPG charm against a backdrop of fast food. You’ll see trees made of french fries, floating chicken nuggets in what I can only assume to be honey mustard “lava”, and ice cubes floating in a soda river. Every part of the game is essentially themed after a certain food. You have your fry world, your chicken world, your ice cream world, and so on and so forth. It’s kind of ridiculous, but the amount of effort that was put into the feeling of each area is great.

The characters and enemies of the game essentially follow suit. I wasn’t expecting personifications of fast food to have an actual personality written in them, and I’m not going to pretend that the writing or characters in this game are deep by any stretch of the imagination, but they really let their creativity out there. As soon as I got to each world, I found myself curious of what tainted food creations I would find, and every single time, I was utterly bewildered and delighted.

It’s a bit amusing to travel through lands of fast food while you have perfectly adventurous music that wouldn’t be out of place in an actual Zelda game. Speaking of Zelda, the game even makes a reference to the iconic jingle.

I’m not going to tell you that this game is somehow a masterclass of RPG design, because it’s definitely not. Most things are incredibly simplistic, the plot is very campy and not very deep, and all of the characters basically amount to “what if this food was a person?”

Still though, Wendy’s easily could’ve just run a simple free food campaign like other fast food restaurants would do, but instead of doing that, they commissioned an indie studio to build an entire game for them, gave them a budget, and let them go ham on it (pun maybe intended). 81monkeys could’ve easily just made a small, hour-long Wendy’s ad and called it a day, but instead they put so much effort into a free piece of marketing material, complete with so many touches of humor. If 81monkeys are willing to put this much effort into a dumb, free, fast food game, then I’m excited to see what World of Anterra will end up looking like.

Beyond that, it’s also a good game to be “baby’s first RPG”, with its hilarious plot, simple gameplay loop, and the fact that enemies don’t respawn. It only took me about 8 hours to finish my first playthrough with most of the hidden goodies unlocked, but that’s about 7 hours more than I could’ve expected for a fast food promotional game that we can play entirely for free.

Plus, it gives you free food, and that’s a great reward. If you really think about it, you’re actually making money by playing this game. It costs you nothing to get it, and you spend less money on buying your next lunch/dinner. You get get the game on Steam, iOS, or Android, but you know what the Steam version has that the others don't? Those sweet achievements.