Master Healer Kale with useless part review
Making a healer fun to play.
Title: Master Healer Kale with useless party
Release: July 2, 2026
Platform: PC
Developer: Evrac Studio
Publisher: Evrac Studio
Genre: Indie Strategy Incremental
ESRB: N/A
Reviewed on: PC
Time Played: 8 Hours
--- PLAYING THE SUPPORT ROLE ---
Playing the healer in a fantasy role-playing game is traditionally a terrible job. But Master Healer Kale takes that frustrating concept and builds a wonderfully chaotic game around it. This indie title puts you in the perspective of a healer burdened with carrying a “useless” squad across the finish line.
The plot kicks off when the local king quickly assembles a party to defeat the recently arrived Demon King. But you do not play as the hero. You play as Kale, a healer burdened with caring for quite the eccentric party. The short story unfolds through conversations at the start of each new dungeon. These interactions lean heavily on cheeky humor. Madeline is a mage born every one hundred years alongside the Demon King. She is powerful but rude, constantly demeaning to Kale and obsessed with her phone. Klepon is your ranger. He is intelligent and studious about what happens in every dungeon, almost too smart for a ranger. And then there’s Grandpa Bagel. He is your tank, always asleep in front of the party, absorbing most of the damage. Kale has to physically push him forward between stages. He will sometimes mumble something relevant to the current conversation, but mostly he is entirely checked out.
--- COMBAT AND CHAOS ---
Progression occurs through a series of dungeons. Each dungeon consists of several stages filled with basic enemies, culminating in a final stage where a strong boss awaits. Your damage dealers act completely autonomously while you control Kale the entire time. Your job is to manage healing and buff spells to keep the party alive. For some unknown reason, Kale cannot take damage, so you never need to worry about your own well-being. If the party falls in combat, you enter a fail state where Kale grabs everyone and pulls them back to safety. The primary challenge revolves around juggling Kale’s mana supply and the party’s health.
Visually, this is a cute little game where the art style leans heavily into an old-school 8-bit aesthetic that’s colorful and fun. While the battles got more and more colorful and chaotic the farther along I got, I could ignore the distraction by simply focusing on the bottom of the screen. That is where my skills and the party’s health points were located. The real difficulty I had was memorizing what buffs the different symbols below their health meant so I could keep those up without wasting mana.
--- THE TAVERN SKILL TREE ---
Whether you successfully beat the dungeon boss or not, you get to return to the tavern to spend your hard-earned gold and experience points. If you do beat the boss, you will be rewarded with one Ruby the first time. While in the tavern, you have access to a massive skill tree with over two hundred upgrades. The left side focuses on Party Boosts, using skill points to upgrade defense and abilities, while the right side belongs to Kale’s Magic, where you upgrade and purchase new spells using gold. The Rubies unlock special skills on either side of the tree. Some skills specifically increase experience and gold gains, making progression that much faster. While in the tavern, I could unlock the option to refund skills and move the gold or skill points wherever I wanted; however, I was limited to following the skill tree upgrades, I couldn’t put all my points in end game skills before learning what came before.
Combat comes down to strictly managing your abilities. Every skill has a cooldown and requires some mana when used. I could order them on my task bar however I wanted, but only during combat and when the skill wasn’t on cooldown. Your spells are primarily focused on keeping HP topped off, alongside a few dedicated to buffing attack speed and power. The skill tree eventually offers mana-managing skills, such as gaining some every time an enemy dies or between stages.
--- THE UNDERWATER DPS CHECK ---
The dungeons will introduce unique debuffs, such as constant damage or mana loss, as you work your way through. The toughest dungeon was getting through a few underwater fights with a 60-second time limit. I failed a lot, focusing on upgrading specific skills that would buff the party enough to output the damage and speed needed to win. The really hard part was timing cooldowns with certain stages of the dungeon. I could use a spell called Cast-All that would apply the following spell to all party members. I had to time that cooldown with haste or damage up at certain spots to maximize damage against more difficult enemies.
--- NIGHTMARE PROGRESSION ---
Beating the first round of dungeons unlocks Nightmare mode. This provides harder versions of every stage, yielding more rubies and unlocking additional skills in the tree. It introduces an endless upgrade system that, after maxing out the base tree, turned nearly every dungeon into a breeze with enough resources invested. Kale could get double his max mana twice, while the party could increase their damage output and defenses by the same amount. The real challenge was deciding which rubies to assign first. Some tough-to-get achievements became trivial once the nightmare tree was unlocked.
It took me about five and a half hours to beat the initial game and unlock nightmare mode. To reach 100 percent completion, you are looking at eight and a half hours. It is a brief, satisfying loop.
--- CAN THE KIDS WATCH? ---
There was no poor language or bloody graphics to worry about. It was very straightforward, full of cheeky humor and flashy colors that could be quite entertaining if the kids wanted to hang out while you played. It could, however, get a little boring for an audience while you lock it in and focus on keeping your party alive.
--- RECOMMENDED? ---
I would absolutely recommend this game. It’s short, and the asking price is very generous considering the varied mechanics and the huge skill tree to play with. If you’re looking for something enjoyable to kill an evening or two, this is an excellent buy.