Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Mixes Borderlands’ Chaos With High-Fantasy Spectacle

The bombastic and incredibly self-aware Borderlands franchise doesn’t deal in subtleties, and neither does upcoming spinoff game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Bringing the series’ high-octane action and a near-infinite arsenal of weapons to the realm of a high-fantasy setting inspired by tabletop role-playing games, the spin-off aims to introduce a new take on the popular “looter-shooter” series.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a loose sequel to Borderlands 2’s most popular expansion, Assault on Dragon Keep, which blended the hyper-violent cartoon carnage of the shooter with a self-aware Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign. It features new heroes, weapons and a brand new campaign with the titular character serving as guide and dungeon master for the band of heroes.

This spin-off hits PC via Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on March 25.

I got to play about an hour of the game, testing out two unique character classes, and the spin-off does stay true to core tenets of Borderlands’ action and bizarre sense of humor.

As an an admirer of the Borderlands series, I found Its most recent entry, Borderlands 3, offered a stellar mix of solid shooting gameplay and a compelling RPG progression system. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands works on the foundations of the previous game but puts a different spin on the action and setting, by putting its raucous and incredibly energetic storyline at the forefront.

Swapping out the space-traveling sci-fi for a high-fantasy setting that still somehow has working guns, the spin-off presents its take on a familiar RPG backdrop. You’re smack dab in a fantasy role-playing game campaign, complete with references to fantasy fiction, and the plot also pokes fun at the absurdities that occur when a tabletop RPG campaign steadily gets out of hand.

Much like previous games, the style of humor can sometimes feel hit or miss in Wonderlands. Unlike the others, though, the plot and the in-jokes in this spin-off do feel a bit more focused as it commits to its RPG pastiche. Some of my favorite moments came from helping overworked goblins working in a mine to rebel against their captors and form a union of sorts. And this was all while using guns and magic to vaporize any enemy in your path.

With this spin-off, it’s clear that the developers at Gearbox are doubling down on what made the Borderlands series such a hit with players – its focus on fast-paced, slick shooting gameplay that incorporates some truly over-the-top skills from your chosen characters.

In keeping with the concept of playing a Borderlands version of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands allows players to build out their character appearance and class type. While the final game will feature 6 character classes, the demo I played focused on the Graveborn and Stabbomancer classes – the Borderlands version of the Necromancer and Rogue archetypes, respectively.

Another twist that Wonderlands introduces to the familiar loop of shooting enemies and watching the loot flow is mixing different class types together. Playing as the Graveborn, I was able to call on abilities from the appropriately named Brr-Zerker class, which blends ice magic with fierce melee strikes. The Graveborn and Brr-Zerker were certainly an odd pairing of classes, but it made for some truly outlandish attack combos that tore through groups of goblins during my dungeon runs, resulting in some seriously enjoyable battles.

One change that we didn’t get to see much of in the preview build was the overworld. This game element allows you to move across a world map with a caricature version of your character to venture to new dungeons, take on side-quests and see dynamic activities. Unfortunately, this wasn’t present in the demo, but the one major location set in a snowy mountain promised a bunch hidden side events.

Since it was announced, I had a lingering worry about Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. While touted as a standalone game, it did give me the impression that it would stick very close to what was done on Borderlands 3, making it feel a bit like another expansion. However, its sense of humor and new setting give it a noticeably different flavor from the previous games, which I got into during my session.

This spin-off is unlikely to win over gamers who aren’t already into the Borderlands series. For fans however, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is cooking up something that sets itself apart from the core series – it goes all in on the premise of a tabletop RPG campaign run amok, mixed with the slick gameplay of a Borderlands game. And that’s pretty compelling to me.