Wendy’s Just Released a Video Game Where You Can Win Fast Food

I won a medium fries by defeating a sinister robot that looked suspiciously similar to a McDonald’s french fry container.

Wendy’s has turned its red-headed mascot into a wisecracking warrior who battles evil french fry robots in a free mobile game called WendyQuest. The company announced the retro-style role-playing game on Nov. 4. The announcement came with a promotion where you can win codes in the game, which are redeemable for menu items like fries and burgers at Wendy’s locations.

WendyQuest is available to download on iOS and Android. Desktop users can get it through the Steam platform. Anyone can play the game, but the promotion is restricted to people who are 18 and up living in the US.

“Wendy’s has been a part of gaming culture for years, including on Twitch, Fortnite and Feast of Legends, but WendyQuest is the brand’s first fully owned video game,” a spokesperson for Wendy’s said.

In 2019, Wendy’s partnered with the online multiplayer video game Fortnite, as well as the video-streaming platform Twitch, for various promotions featuring the company’s mascot. The company even released a rule book for a traditional tabletop roleplaying game the same year, called Feast of Legends, as a free download.

I downloaded WendyQuest, and my daughter and I played it for a while. The blocky graphics are reminiscent of the home-console video games of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It plays a lot like a simplified version of the DragonQuest, Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire games from the era, only stuffed with fast-food branding.

Rather than the regular turn-based battles that come standard in the early RPGs, this game adds a timing element, where you need to press a button at the right time like you do in old golfing video games.

It’s not a bad game. The light humor is suitable for younger players, and it’s fun to play. Like many RPGs, you battle monsters to gain levels, search around the maps for hidden areas, buy items and talk to people in towns to figure out what’s going on.

Video games have a long history of offering real-world prizes to players as promotions. Swordquest, a series of video games released in the early 1980s for the Atari 2600, famously held a contest where players tried to win actual treasure made of gold and jewels.

In 2015, a promotion for the video game Just Cause 3 offered players the chance to win a private island. Developer Square Enix clarified that it couldn’t guarantee that the island would be livable and that the winner would have to pay all the taxes involved.

The reward codes from WendyQuest expire seven days after you get them, and Wendy’s says the codes are first come, first served.