Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker tries to be two things at once: an action-adventure game with pre-built dungeons and a creation tool for building your own. Developed by Aquiris and released on Apple Arcade in 2021, the game draws inspiration from the “play and create” philosophy of titles like LittleBigPlanet and Mario Maker. You explore diorama-style adventure boxes filled with puzzles, combat, and treasure, and then you can build your own using an extensive editor.
The community response has been split along those two identities. The creation tools have earned genuine praise for their depth and accessibility. The pre-made adventure content, however, has been criticized for shallow combat and repetitive design.
A Toybox of Possibilities
The adventure creation system is Wonderbox’s standout feature. The editor allows you to build detailed isometric adventure levels with terrain sculpting, enemy placement, puzzle design, trap configuration, and environmental storytelling. The tools are powerful enough to create impressive adventures while being accessible enough that you don’t need game design experience to produce something playable.
Sharing adventures online and playing creations from other users extends the content indefinitely. The best community-made adventures rival or exceed the quality of the pre-built content, and discovering clever designs from other creators provides a discovery loop that pre-made games can’t replicate. The community has produced puzzle boxes, combat gauntlets, narrative experiences, and experimental creations that push the editor in unexpected directions.
The visual style is charming, with a toy-box aesthetic that makes adventures look like miniature dioramas. The art direction gives everything a handcrafted quality that suits the creative theme, and the variety of environmental assets available in the editor means community creations can look dramatically different from one another.
Playing What’s There
The pre-made adventures that ship with the game are adequate introductions to the creation tools but don’t hold up as standalone content. Combat is simple tap-and-dodge with limited enemy variety, and the puzzle design follows basic patterns that experienced adventure gamers will solve without pause. These adventures serve as tutorials for the editor more than as engaging experiences in their own right.
The combat system’s simplicity is the biggest gameplay limitation. Attacking, dodging, and using items against enemies feels flat because there’s no depth to the mechanics. No combo system, no weapon variety that matters, no strategic positioning. Combat encounters are obstacles to clear rather than engaging challenges to overcome.
The online community, while active among enthusiasts, hasn’t reached the critical mass needed to ensure a constant stream of high-quality content. Finding great community adventures requires sifting through many mediocre ones, and the curation and discovery tools could be stronger. The game doesn’t surface its best content effectively.
Create to Compensate
Wonderbox’s value proposition depends almost entirely on how invested you become in the creation tools. If you enjoy building levels and sharing them, the game offers dozens of hours of creative engagement. If you approach it purely as a player, the pre-made content and community browsing provide a thinner experience.
This is a common challenge for play-and-create games, and Wonderbox handles it better than some but not as well as the genre’s best. The gap between the creation tool’s quality and the pre-made content’s quality is too wide, leaving players who aren’t interested in building without enough to sustain their interest.
Should You Play Wonderbox?
If you love level editors and creative tools in games, Wonderbox’s adventure maker is impressive and worth exploring. The ability to build, share, and play community adventures provides genuine long-term value. For Apple Arcade subscribers who enjoyed Mario Maker or LittleBigPlanet’s creation modes, this is worth trying.
Skip it if you want polished, pre-made adventure content. The built-in adventures and community browsing experience don’t provide enough quality or variety to sustain engagement without the creation side. Players who just want to play rather than build should look elsewhere.
The Verdict on Wonderbox
Wonderbox delivers an ambitious creation tool wrapped in a thin adventure game. The editor is powerful and accessible, the sharing system enables genuine community creativity, and the visual charm makes the creation process enjoyable. But the pre-made adventures are too simple to stand alone, the combat lacks depth, and the community content requires patience to sift through. It’s a strong creation game that needs a stronger game around it.