I highly recommend this game to all those who want to have a more wholesome game and bemoan that so often we can just solve things by violence. In fact, that is one of the main ethical points of the protagonist: he doesn’t want to use violence. The problem is just, the world is ending and a hero is needed. And what is a hero who doesn’t wield a sword and uses that sword? Well, play this game and find out if the protagonist can stay true to their convication or not.
The protagonist is a bard or in fact The Bard, no other name given. Every problem the bard encounters is solved by what the bard can do best: singing. This is represented by you selecting the note for his singing via a radial menu, using either mouse or gamepad stick. The developers managed that this simple mechanic didn’t feel annoying to me over the roughly 10 hours playtime. Instead they reused/recontextualized it in different ways multiple times, so that it doesn’t felt overused. In general this is an easy game without really difficult parts besides some rythm parts. But even then you don’t need to hit the right note by ear, it is shown which note to hit like in other rythm games.
It is sometimes a silly game, but silly in a wholesome way. Where I often couldn’t stop smiling due to the siliness. Like who has ever heard of singing coffee pirates? Or the fact that there is a dedicated dance button, which you can press nearly at all time, making some cutscenes a bit less serious. It feels similar in a way to Night in the Woods regarding the atmosphere and talks between the main characters.
This game is not however for people who want to have action sequences, a realistic graphic or can’t stand some silliness in their games.
Personally I’ve always wanted a game where I can talk to the raiders in the forest, tell them to stop raiding the nearby villages, then leave and come back later to find burnt ruins where a village used to be.
But this’ll do.
I’m sure the coffee pirates are good pirates who respect other people’s property. Coffee merchants in pirate costume.
I’ve recently been thinking of how I hate RPGs where if you have a choice, it’s between obviously bad and obviously good outcome. Bonus points when it’s determined by a single dialogue option at the end.
So I came up with a concept of an RPG where every quest has multiple solutions and every single one of them turns out disastrously for everyone involved. Like I’d love to see some real gut-punches there. The only way to avoid that would be to not accept the quest in the first place. If you don’t, after some in-game time passes you get to hear how the situation resolved itself nicely without your involvement. The kicker? Most if not all XP would come from quest rewards, so in order to not cause harm to everyone you meet, you’d have to essentially do a challenge run.
Definitely an interesting concept. The hard part would be to make it still interesting for the player to continue or better restart and also to keep it hidden, so that the player will reach this conclusion by themselves. Too oftena nice mechanic like that is already given in the marketing material, underscoring every emotional impact it could have ever had.
Haven’t played it myself yet but from what I heard the Witcher series should be up your alley then.
Ask me about Loom
Funny you compared the atmosphere to Night in the Woods, the same sound designer did both games.
I love Wandersong so much. I’ve tried to put into words what makes this game different to every other game. It usually goes something like this.
Nearly every game is about winning. Some are about plumbers leaping their way to the flag pole. Some are about gun-wielding heroes shooting everything. Those are pretty obvious examples of games where the primary emotion is Fiero (the feeling of pride after accomplishment). But even games about cozily pushing blocks, or doing skateboard tricks, or running a successful shop are also predominantly about fiero.
Now, I agree that not all games are about this one emotion. Horror games feature fiero, but are mostly about exploring fear. And there are lots of games that explore other emotions as their primary goal. But the vast majority of games are about winning and the emotion of fiero.
Wandersong is about happiness and not fiero. It makes that perfectly clear in its opening moments. The protagonist is made (painfully?) aware that he is not the hero. The Bard goes on to have several conversations with other characters about happiness. The plot largely revolves around increasing happiness. And, in terms of gameplay, in almost all the places a typical game would offer players chances to feel fiero, this game offers the player opportunities to experience happiness instead.
If you’re looking for it, it’s clear that the game is occasionally working to prevent fiero and present happiness in its place. The game frequently puts the player in situations where there is no opportunity for them or The Bard to “win”. Instead, they have the chance to help or to be helped. And sometimes even when things turn out well, it’s despite The Bard and the player failing at their goal.
It’s a unique game made with tons of love and I treasure it. I would recommend it to anyone with a heart.
That’s an interesting way to think about it
Fun fact: King’s Quest I, one of the very first games in the world to use graphics, had puzzles that could be solved in multiple ways. Taking a non-violent approach was the only way to max out your score however. For example, there’s a giant you can kill with a slingshot, or you can tire him out and make him fall asleep for more points.
I wish someone would do a NoClip-esque documentary on Sierra. That studio seems amazing and Roberta Williams was a crazy good game designer.
Look up OneShortEye on youtube. The main focus is point and click game speedrunning, but a lot of the videos are an in-depth look into the design and history of various games, like this one about Colonel’s Bequest.
You might already know about this, but she recently released a 3d remake of Adventure, sometimes considered the first adventure game ever. The remake is called Colossal Cave. I bring it up because the Game Grumps played some of it while Roberta talked with them on air! It’s not a documentary, but there are tons of interesting things she talks about throughout. Look it up on YouTube if you’re interested. 🙂
I was enchanted by the game the moment I saw how it was played, I loved it as soon as I started playing, and I was captivated as soon as Ash’s plot played out. At one point, the game said my life’s philosophy in plain text, and another person said it was dumb and pointed out the flaws in that philosophy.
How good are the characters? As soon as I learned you can exhaust dialogue trees, there was not a soul I didn’t wander next to to hear more dialogue.
How good is the soundtrack? I have learned how to play I Want To Be The Hero on ukulele.
I highly recommend Chicory from the same dev.
I watched Super Sleepover Society’s playthrough of this, and I debated if I’d enjoy the gameplay. The silly story is just my sort of thing, though.
I’ve seen Wanderbots’ & Chelle’s playthrough and singing. But while I enjoyed the story, humor, characters (and their performance), I don’t think I’m personally a fan of its simplistic platformer / adventure type of gameplay.
I’d still highly recommend it to those who do like, or at least don’t mind, the gameplay though. And everyone else should at least watch a playthrough on YouTube of it as it is definitely great entertainment.
I also really enjoyed this one. Played it on Nintendo Switch.
