What is Wandersong, anyway?
Jun. 20th, 2019 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamebyrdI thought I'd do up a post explaining what this game is that consumed most of my brain for several weeks. (I've been trying to cut back on my talking to everyone I see about This Great Game I Played and yet I've told three different people about it in the last two days.)
In short, Wandersong is a story-driven puzzle adventure game with light platforming. The main mechanic of the game is using your analog stick or mouse to sing at things. It's an indie game with a very small development team that was partially Kickstarted.
If you want a game about people who are bad at emotions developing friendships, trying to save the world when you're nobody, and (most importantly) singing, you might like this one!
The official website is available at wanderso.ng. The game is on Steam (PC + Mac), Switch and PS4.
You can watch the official launch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMYXwuNUDuY
The Switch announcement trailer gives a pretty accurate impression of the game, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvCJPOv1e_I
In long...
Story:
Premise: The Universe is old and tired and its creator, Eya, is planning to end it and replace it with a new one. A Bard and a Witch set out to prevent that through the power of song.
The story has a positive tone, although is not always strictly happy, and goes in some unusual directions. On a meta level, the story is lightly interrogating video game tropes and hero narratives.
Characters:
The Bard: They are a cheerful soul and a pacifist who just wants to make everyone happy... and prevent the world from ending. The Bard is the kind of person who will demand to talk to the cave monster instead of fighting them (and Wandersong is the kind of story where that works). Their gender is never established in-game, and you choose their name from a limited set of letters (4 groups of 8 letters), although the developers recommend the name Kiwi (which is adorable) or Bard.
The Rainbow Girl: A messenger from Eya (the creator of the universe) who thinks the Bard is really cute and tells about the world's upcoming end, and how it could potentially be preserved.
Miriam: A hot-tempered, impatient witch who knows how to save the world and would be doing it right now if anyone would actually talk to her. Her grandmother wants her to bring the Bard along to handle the "talking to people" parts and Miriam is not happy about it. She would love it if the Bard would just let her blast things with her Extremely Powerful Magic.
The other major character is a spoiler.
(Bard and Miriam are the two characters in my icon here.)
There are background queer characters, but no central romance to the game. There is an extremely large NPC cast.
Gameplay:
The main mechanic is your song wheel, which allows you to interact with the objects in the world in a variety of ways. Each act will have a unique mechanic associated with it. For example, in Act 1, you sing at vines to make them carry you to other parts of the level.
Each major area also has a dance hidden in it. The dances add nothing to the story and are never integrated into puzzle mechanics, but are fun to have!
The game is very generous with its failure states and checkpoints, and occasionally will actively make a task easier when you take a long time at it. I am bad at platforming and timing-based challenges but I managed to muddle through okay.
The basic structure of each act is a section where you wander around talking to people and solving a few basic puzzles, a brief rhythm game, and then a section where you are mostly solving (slightly more complicated) puzzles.
Skills required:
- Being able to accurately point in one of eight directions with the mouse or analog stick
- Ability to handle mild timing and rhythm based puzzles
- Jumping between platforms
- Reading a lot of text
Not required:
- Memorising tunes for later (this isn't Loom!)
- Perfect pitch. Puzzle hints include direction and colour (likewise, the game will be more difficult but possible if you're colourblind)
- Plot-changing decision-making
Other:
- Yes, you can pet the dog. And many other animals.
- You can dance at basically any time. Even in cut scenes. This can be hilarious.
Visuals:
The art style is 2D vector based and has a vaguely paper-cutout aesthetic. It's extremely bright and colourful. I love it a lot.
That said, the Bard's character design took a while to grow on me - their default smiling expression with huge blank eyes is just a little creepy. All their other expressions are A+++ though.
Music
I found the soundtrack to be a mix of some really catchy tunes that I was humming for days, and some completely forgettable. But it largely fits the mood of the game, and it's a heap of fun to run through the levels harmonising with the background music.
Some of my favourite tracks:
The Bard: From the first scene of Act 1, this theme is woven into later tracks throughout the game.
Moonscape: This is the song used in the launch trailer (as well as Act 5), and I love it a lot.
Lightning Strike and Thunderstorm: The brilliance of these pieces is mostly about context, so maybe don't listen if you want to avoid spoilers.
Content Notes / Warnings:
There aren't any major themes that I feel the need to warn for, but it does depict some elements of dysfunctional family dynamics, depression, grief, war, and there are ghosts. And there's some spontaneous un-negotiated hugging (look, I wouldn't like it if someone did it to me, although in fiction I mostly find it cute).
PS: If you finish the game you can read the fic I wrote.
In short, Wandersong is a story-driven puzzle adventure game with light platforming. The main mechanic of the game is using your analog stick or mouse to sing at things. It's an indie game with a very small development team that was partially Kickstarted.
If you want a game about people who are bad at emotions developing friendships, trying to save the world when you're nobody, and (most importantly) singing, you might like this one!
The official website is available at wanderso.ng. The game is on Steam (PC + Mac), Switch and PS4.
You can watch the official launch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMYXwuNUDuY
The Switch announcement trailer gives a pretty accurate impression of the game, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvCJPOv1e_I
In long...
Story:
Premise: The Universe is old and tired and its creator, Eya, is planning to end it and replace it with a new one. A Bard and a Witch set out to prevent that through the power of song.
The story has a positive tone, although is not always strictly happy, and goes in some unusual directions. On a meta level, the story is lightly interrogating video game tropes and hero narratives.
Characters:
The Bard: They are a cheerful soul and a pacifist who just wants to make everyone happy... and prevent the world from ending. The Bard is the kind of person who will demand to talk to the cave monster instead of fighting them (and Wandersong is the kind of story where that works). Their gender is never established in-game, and you choose their name from a limited set of letters (4 groups of 8 letters), although the developers recommend the name Kiwi (which is adorable) or Bard.
The Rainbow Girl: A messenger from Eya (the creator of the universe) who thinks the Bard is really cute and tells about the world's upcoming end, and how it could potentially be preserved.
Miriam: A hot-tempered, impatient witch who knows how to save the world and would be doing it right now if anyone would actually talk to her. Her grandmother wants her to bring the Bard along to handle the "talking to people" parts and Miriam is not happy about it. She would love it if the Bard would just let her blast things with her Extremely Powerful Magic.
The other major character is a spoiler.
(Bard and Miriam are the two characters in my icon here.)
There are background queer characters, but no central romance to the game. There is an extremely large NPC cast.
Gameplay:
The main mechanic is your song wheel, which allows you to interact with the objects in the world in a variety of ways. Each act will have a unique mechanic associated with it. For example, in Act 1, you sing at vines to make them carry you to other parts of the level.
Each major area also has a dance hidden in it. The dances add nothing to the story and are never integrated into puzzle mechanics, but are fun to have!
The game is very generous with its failure states and checkpoints, and occasionally will actively make a task easier when you take a long time at it. I am bad at platforming and timing-based challenges but I managed to muddle through okay.
The basic structure of each act is a section where you wander around talking to people and solving a few basic puzzles, a brief rhythm game, and then a section where you are mostly solving (slightly more complicated) puzzles.
Skills required:
- Being able to accurately point in one of eight directions with the mouse or analog stick
- Ability to handle mild timing and rhythm based puzzles
- Jumping between platforms
- Reading a lot of text
Not required:
- Memorising tunes for later (this isn't Loom!)
- Perfect pitch. Puzzle hints include direction and colour (likewise, the game will be more difficult but possible if you're colourblind)
- Plot-changing decision-making
Other:
- Yes, you can pet the dog. And many other animals.
- You can dance at basically any time. Even in cut scenes. This can be hilarious.
Visuals:
The art style is 2D vector based and has a vaguely paper-cutout aesthetic. It's extremely bright and colourful. I love it a lot.
That said, the Bard's character design took a while to grow on me - their default smiling expression with huge blank eyes is just a little creepy. All their other expressions are A+++ though.
Music
I found the soundtrack to be a mix of some really catchy tunes that I was humming for days, and some completely forgettable. But it largely fits the mood of the game, and it's a heap of fun to run through the levels harmonising with the background music.
Some of my favourite tracks:
The Bard: From the first scene of Act 1, this theme is woven into later tracks throughout the game.
Moonscape: This is the song used in the launch trailer (as well as Act 5), and I love it a lot.
Lightning Strike and Thunderstorm: The brilliance of these pieces is mostly about context, so maybe don't listen if you want to avoid spoilers.
Content Notes / Warnings:
There aren't any major themes that I feel the need to warn for, but it does depict some elements of dysfunctional family dynamics, depression, grief, war, and there are ghosts. And there's some spontaneous un-negotiated hugging (look, I wouldn't like it if someone did it to me, although in fiction I mostly find it cute).
PS: If you finish the game you can read the fic I wrote.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-24 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-24 08:42 am (UTC)Small fandoms are funny though, at 40 hits and 11 kudos it's simultaneously one of my better kudos/hits ratios, and one of my lowest actual number of kudos.