Wandersong

Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Developer/Publisher: Greg Lobanov
Release Date: Sept 27, 2018
Platform: PC (also on Switch and PS4)
Time Played: 13 Hours

I first saw the trailer for Wandersong while looking through the PAX 10 listings for PAX West 2017 and knew I had to play it. It’s the sort of game that just looks like it’ll be something special, and I’m happy to say it really lived up to every expectation I had.

I won’t go into plot spoilers, but at the very beginning of the story, you learn that the universe is coming to an end. You’re a happy bard – you can’t swing a sword, you can’t cast spells, you can’t even really intimidate anyone. All you can do is sing. With little hope of success, you set out to try and save everyone. There are a number of Overseers in the world, guardians essentially, who each hold a piece of an Earthsong. The Earthsong is said to have the potential to stop the imminent destruction of the universe, so you set off to learn it.

The player sings by bringing up a song wheel and pressing a direction (with the right controller stick or mouse). Quite a few of the puzzles are just basic games of Simon. An NPC will sing a few notes that you have to repeat, but they did a great job of bringing in more elements throughout the game to keep it interesting, which usually involve manipulating the environment through song. In addition to the sound, each note from an NPC will also have a colour and a direction associated with it, so this should be no problem for someone with hearing loss or colour blindness to pick up. There’s no real punishment for missing a note other than the sound itself being off. This isn’t a game that’s meant to be challenging.

What really makes Wandersong special is the attention to detail. When you first start playing, the environment around you seems very basic, essentially just blocky platforms with a fill texture. The simple environments are somewhat deceiving, however, as you quickly realize that Greg Lobanov and his small team really put a lot of heart and thought into this – each character has a completely unique design, the environment reacts by bouncing and changing colours whenever you sing, and the sound design is truly fantastic. It’s done by Em Halberstadt, who was the sound designer on Night in the Woods, and I’m pretty much planning to buy any game she works on now. I love the clever little touches, like how the Bard sings in a whisper when he’s scared or how he snores musically (memememeeme, falalalala, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-te). She’s part of A Shell In The Pit, which is a game audio and composition company, and they also produced this giant soundtrack of over one hundred songs (previously also the soundtrack for Night in the Woods and Rogue Legacy). Even the background sounds on the scene selection page, which I posted a sample of on Twitter, are genius:

The background sounds in the scene select screen for @Wandersong_game are amazing. I love this game. #Wandersong pic.twitter.com/H5bKIgnArw

— Rob (@mcmillan) January 27, 2019

I really did love this game. The only negative thing that really comes to mind is that the writing could be a little sharper. The dialogue can feel slow to click through at times, and while the overall plot and character interactions are enjoyable, it’s not like Night in the Woods where every piece of the dialogue felt considered in a way that made you look forward to each response. Some of the dialogue in this felt like filler. It wasn’t enough to ruin the experience for me, but I wasn’t always excited to exhaust a character’s dialogue prompts (although, obviously, I did).

You can tell that they had a goal in this game to just make it feel joyful. That’s why you can jump on beds, learn a number of different dances that have no purpose, and burst into song at any point in the story. It’s about a seemingly average person finding joy in whatever task they are working on and in the people around them. That may sound like it would result in a shallow story, but they do a great job of developing the characters throughout the game. They each have their own fears and burdens, feelings of self-doubt and of not fitting in, and they do address and explore those feelings. The genius of having a carefree and ridiculously happy protagonist is that they let him falter and find his spirit again, and when he comes out the other side of that, you’re right there with him. You get why he has that attitude, and why others around him may not.

This is definitely a cute game, but not in a sickening way. Greg Lobanov pulled off a great balance, having the main character surrounded by bizarre and often jaded characters. I loved the music, the humour, and I really grew to love the paper-cutout-ish art style as well. It’s the sort of game I think a lot of people could probably use right now, after that hellish year we all just had.